Father's Day, past: Part II (of III), The mountains as the busom
Continued from Part I
This father and sons bike riding trip from Jasper to Banff over the Rocky Mountains in Western Canada was meant as a bucket list thing for me—after all I am 70 and don’t know the length of my health and ability runway, or indeed, what time I have left—and an intensified re-bonding with my boys. In fact, there was an additional aspect that was highly significant for me. Re-bonding with my father. This is a bit hard to explain but I will try by the end of Part III.
And I carry it with me like my daddy did
But I'm living the dream that he kept hid
(lyrics from Jim Croce song by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel)
It has been clear to me how much my daddy loved the mountain setting, and what it meant to him on a fundamental level. He often told me that when he was a boy he had a book about Canada, and spent hours looking through the books pages at the mountain scenes. They were so beautiful, the verdant pines in the valleys, the bubbling streams, the surrounding jagged peaks, ice and rocks. How he longed to experience them as a child! As a young adult, after he moved out of his home, he would spend every week-end traveling by train from Benjin to Zakopane, a beautiful mountainous area and ski resort in southern Poland. There he and friends would hike, picnic, After the war, he pined to come to Canada to unite with the peaceful mountains of his imagination. To say the least, his chances of emigrating to Canada were statistically slightly greater than that of having surviving the war in Europe, 3/100—of which his were several orders of magnitude less (will provide some more information here and there in upcoming blogs). But he hoped and pined.
Anyway, he made it to Canada. He ended up in Toronto. He had a (second) family—my mother, me (born back in Stuttgart Germany), and then my brother Harold, and sister Sylvia, born in Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital. No mountains to speak of, but he nevertheless did frequently speak of mountains. As a child I remember that his words were in great contrast to the pervasive mindset of the time. Land was seen as empty, cheap and plentiful and fully disposable and despoilable. Trees were seen at best, as resources to be cut down, used to build shelters and burned for fires, and at worst, as barriers to “settling the land”. It was quite common for arrogant people driving in cars to throw their cigarettes, gum wrappers, pop and beer bottles, banana peels, half eaten sandwiches, and refuse from the windows of their cars while driving on the highway. Yes, even the good people that were our friends and neighbors did that. No one said anything. My father looked on in silence with an ache in his heart.
My father was a pacifist (more on that later), and an early version of an environmentalist. He regretted the despoiling of the land, the clearing of the trees, the expansion of what we were told in the media and in school, was “progress”: land denuded of trees, paved parking lots, buildings, shopping malls, roads, factories, belching chimneys, car and truck exhausts, the bustling din of motors, tire noise, car horns, Muzak. This was the background music to the frenzied pursuit of new, bigger houses, fancier furniture, more money, bigger cars…none of which my father seemed particularly interested in.
My daddy, when he could, sought out quiet natural scenes in parks, outside of the city. He listened for birds chirping, the lap of waves on a beach, the fragrance of flowers and pine trees. These were scarce where we lived and my daddy had to make do with small tokens of serenity such as a small nearby park, or just some grass, bushes and flowers in a small corner parkette.
But The Mountains…oh those mountains! My daddy looked for their majestic size to impose their dominance over the petty human imprints on nature. To overwhelm the sense of smell with pine fragrances, blanket all with fresh clean air rolling down from up high, provide water to drink from mountain springs and glacier melts. These thoughts and hopes infused his soul with optimism and love for the world.
Later in life my father developed progressive Parkinsons disease that restricted his mobility. In the winter of 1985, about 4 years after the Real Santa trip (Part I), and a month after taking Mia at age 5 to Smuggler’s notch for her ski indoctrination, Sarah and I took the 2 big kids and the baby (Noam), my daddy and my mother to Lake Louise. There my parents had the joy of being with their children, grandchildren, and luxuriated at the best the Chateau Lake Louise could provide. Outside there was the magnificent vista of the lake, frozen and snow as if it was a blanket covering the feet of the mountains, and the glaciers extending their tongues from on high to lick the water. Above the mountains, as the night darkened the sky from deep blue to black, it in turn changed to milky white with the profusion of stars.
My parents accompanied us to the ski hill in the day time, watched the skiers returning to the chalet. After lunch, they took the bus back to the Chateau. At night we went to cozy restaurants, then rode on the horse drawn sleigh covered in wool blankets.
See the magnificent Canadian mountains. Check. To once again walk on mountain trail, inhaling the fresh mountain air lightly tinted with pine fragrance my daddy craved. Check. At the end of the day, tuck in to bed your little grandchildren and know their bellies are full with all the food that the child could eat. Check.
What raving madness could have ever conjured up this absurdity?
