Some places mysteriously become part of the structure of the heart, as much as valves and arteries and veins, though undetectable by ECGs. Jasper, Alberta, at first just a pretty place to work for the summer and make money off generous tourists, turned into a heart dwelling before I understood what had happened.

Lake Annette, in the photo above, was definitely part of that process. Even on my first day in Jasper, as I sorted out what my job was going to be and where I was going to live, I felt wrapped around by the beauty of the mountains. My heart had been wooed already in childhood when I had traveled once or twice through the Rockies. Now, in my first young adult adventures away from home, I found more than grandeur or adventure.

Slowly but surely the quality of silence inherent in the rough gathering of stone and water and pine and spruce drew me in, offering a solitude of soul I think I’d been longing for all along. Oh, I hiked with friends and explored the trails and lesser lakes around Jasper; we borrowed bicycles and rejoiced in our developing stamina; we swung gently on the playground swings in evenings off and watched the sun disappear in a way that it never did on the prairies.

 Much as I loved sharing all these moments with friends, and then with a boyfriend, I treasured the times of aloneness when I belonged to the landscape and to myself. Expectations gone. Fearfulness dismissed. I was learning how to breathe and be. To smile and to be happy. Ach, that word is over-used and inadequate here. I was exalted, exultant.

            I took the photo above just a few years ago, at the tail end of a road trip in the last days of summer. I had retired by then, metaphorically speaking also in the last days of summer, becoming mellower, less driven, more practiced in the art of resting in silence, never imagining then how important that art would be in the summer of 2023.  

We visited Lake Annette again last summer, in 2022. Jasper is, thank God, still a small mountain town. Still dependent on tourists and skiers and hikers, but not over-developed and commercialized past the point of help. The mighty Athabasca River and the surrounding mountains have limited the growth of the town to where it is now and has been for decades. There are signs enough of wealth and privilege, but the hiking trails remain accessible to all, never mind how expensive or ratty the boots of the hikers may be. The campgrounds now boast more massive RVs than simple backpacker tents, but there are still plenty of those tents, with bicycles nearby.

Many of my once favorite trails are now too busy for my liking (the Valley of Five Lakes is practically standing room only on a lovely summer day), yet there are still reflection-perfect ponds near half-forgotten trails where crowds of marsh marigolds celebrate in joy and the shyer wood lilies lurk in shade. There is also plenty of space along the rocky edge of the river where one may be alone to meditate and turn over small stones in the hand. Hours pass unnoticed while inner voices go quiet against the immortal voice of the river. 

In this summer when all travel became impossible for me, let alone the usual stay in the Rockies, I have needed all the fortitude I could muster to practice contentment with much solitude indoors. However, that mysterious grace in the universe that drops the right book off the shelf into hands that had expected nothing is still at work. Anam Cara by John O’Donohue had been given to me by a dear friend decades ago. I think I read it then; I don’t remember if I finished it. I was probably not ready for its Celtic mysticism. Now, after having sat, practically invisible, on my bookshelf for who knows how many years, it demanded to be read.

And read it I did. With increasing interest and pen in hand for underlining. I am grateful, if not quite grateful enough yet to bless the weeks and weeks of enforced bed rest that led me to pick up Anam Cara. The section titled “Aging: An Invitation to New Solitude” might once have terrified me. Now, flat in bed for more hours in the day than I once would have thought endurable, I could read this without being frightened: “A new quietness settles on the outer frame of your active life, on the work that you have done, the family that you have raised, and the role that you have played. Your life takes on a greater stillness and solitude.”  I doubt that O’Donohue was thinking of the kind of enforced stillness that I was enduring.

Nevertheless, I could see his point that we often “miss out on the great treasures of our lives because we are so restless. In our minds we are always elsewhere. We are seldom in the place where we stand [or we lie!] and in the time that is now.” Between the regrets over the past and the worries of the future, O’Donohue observes, we have little energy left for savoring what is in front of us.

I’m inclined to counter with an argument that we find our meaning in life through learning to recognize divine guidance in the past and setting our goals for the future. There is a time and place for revisiting past mistakes and offering apologies, for instance, just as there is a time and place for resolving to do better in the future and even making promises that can’t be fulfilled in the now.

As always, a single viewpoint doesn’t show us the whole scene, let alone what may be found in the next valley beyond the hill we’re now climbing. Which, I think, O’Donohue understood better than I do. So I grant him the final words.

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If, as you age, you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself.

John O’Donohue