Canadian Rockies [antikvár]

The Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rocky Mountains are known around the world, and visitors come from all over to drive, hike, ski, walk and ride horses or bikes through the magnificent 20,160 sq km/ 6169 sq mi of wilderness that is protected in the four mountain parks. Men, women and children, young and old, from hundreds of different ethnic and economic backgrounds, come together here to drink in the sights, shoulder to shoulder, year after year. The towns of Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper can be crowded in the summer months, and traffic gets backed up, but somehow it's still a very peaceful place - perhaps because people are happy to be here, and happy to be on vacation. After all, beyond the roads and the towns are thousands of miles of pristine wilderness, and that wilderness has a presence that transcends the congestion. You know it's out there, even if you don't explore beyond the roadside. The air here smells wonderful. Within a five minute walk, you can find a place to be totally alone, with just the trees and the mountains and the birds for company. At night stars light up the sky, and sometimes coyotes can be heard calling to each other in the dark. What is it about a soaring mountain, with glaciers clinging to its slopes and a blue-green lake nestled at its base, that makes it beautiful to people? It seems one of nature's most profound survival mechanisms is its ability to transfix humans with its beauty. Because if humans didn't find natural places beautiful, and if we didn't need them to survive, we could easily destroy them. We've already done an awful lot of that, in fact - and it's not altogether clear that changing our ways now will do that much good. Protected areas like national parks are incredibly important. By their very existence they raise awareness of the fact that most of our land is not protected, and not in its natural state. They give people an opportunity to be in a part of the world that is little changed by humans, and to see how different that is. And the mountain parks are so remarkable - to see nature and our planet at its most beautiful is to be moved by something other than ourselves; it's an experience that makes people think. For children visiting the Rockies, seeing the power and the vulnerability of the earth could be the beginning of a lifelong respect for it. The world will be a better place, and a place with a better chance of survival, if when each of us goes home from these mountains we carry the memory of them in our heart, and if we use that memory to remind us to value the part of the earth we call home. And to do what we can to help protect it, or clean it up, or preserve it, before it's too late.