Eons of rock

When I was recently in Alberta we drove through the Rockies a couple of times. It is really awe inspiring -- who are we to worry about our small, short lives when faced with the longevity of a mountain? Time moves more slowly for things like mountains and glaciers. Gazing at them really highlights the brevity of human life. However, mountains are not always eternal, as we discovered when we went to see the Frank Slide. This landslide occurred in 1903, and it was so enormous an estimated one hundred million tons of limestone slid into the valley and onto the town of Frank. 76 people died, making it one of the biggest landslide disasters ever in Canada. Only when we were there and looking at it did we comprehend the huge nature of it. Even after all these years you can still feel the immediacy of it; it's more than a hundred years for us and yet only yesterday for the mountain.

This mountain seemed sturdy enough on the misty day we visited, though. The mist sitting on the peaks made us feel as if we had stumbled into a fantasy novel by mistake...