Traveling—moving from place to another.

It’s no surprise that by personally travelling, my ideas, thoughts, feelings and insights travel too. Movement inspires movement in all facets, including my own thoughts. This series explores reflections from my travel experiences.

Pictured below isn’t quite the usual look at Banff’s Lake Louise. I think this captures the lake’s stillness and serenity better than the saturated turquoise colour that usually represents the lake.

We visited the lake at the break of dawn, where I snapped this picture. Our drive to the lake started in pitch black. Each passing minute invited more diffuse light from the rising sun. The change in light was imperceptible to the eyes because it was in such small increments. It was much more noticeable if you closed your eyes for a minute or two. As with most things, though, overtime the change in surroundings was made very clear. Our car was surrounded by these massive mountains that caved in our car on the left and right side of the road.

Describing the magnitude of mountains is an insurmountable task; the best I can do is describe how I felt seeing them.

I felt small—in a good way.

Digesting that there’s something in our physical world that large is a very impactful realization. It lessens the value I place on myself or the importance I give my problems. It presented an opportunity to live in unison with the physical world. It was a channel to living in the present moment. It’s difficult to worry about getting your G license, figuring out what to do post grad, or feeling disappointed that you didn’t eat enough protein yesterday when your focus is entirely on the Herculean task of perception.

A memory that I’m particularly fond of is when we biked from Canmore to the town of Banff.

Road infrastructure was pretty limited. There’s essentially one highway, the Trans Canada highway, that spans between most of the tourist hotspots. There’s also a single bike path that runs adjacent to this highway. Cars, bikes, mountains and trees—it doesn’t get much better than that.