Wilderness of the Rockies

Leave a light on in the wild
Cause I’m coming in a little blind
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
Shining a little light to bring us back home
Went to find you in the backyard
Hiding behind our busy lives
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
To help us get back into the world
Cause I know I’ve seen you before
Won’t you shine a little light on us now?
Won’t you shine a little light in your own a backyard?
Won’t you shine a little light in your own backyard?
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods

As we crossed Canada by rail, we made a week-long pit stop in Jasper.

We spent that week exploring Jasper and ventured down the Ice Field Parkway to Banff, where we stumbled upon the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

The festival inspired us to really get out there and explore! So we went braving into the cold and seeking adventure any chance we got, despite being dressed in too many layers of cotton.

Thanks to the fact that we chose to explore off-season, we were blessed to spend many peaceful hours alone in the woods and valleys, where we came face to face with lots of wildlife of all sizes.
(but to Gabriel’s dismay, no bears in sight.
Yes, he is completely nuts)

Being still in the woods definitely has its advantages, and sharing a meadow with a family of deer just feet away, having big horn sheep follow you back to your car, or almost tripping over a moose and its breast-feeding calf in the dawn twilight, well, that’s just priceless.

The animals are impressive, but the landscapes themselves are a sight to behold.

We stopped at the Columbia Ice Fields and mishapped a little closer to the glacier than we realized was safe, having come form the wrong end of the road. Nothing happened to us, but the signs on the way back about hidden crevices and quasi-instantaneous hypothermia did freak us out.
However, we were glad to have gotten the footage we did get from the glacier’s mouth, so we went along our merry way, not-so-distraught. If you’re headed that way, consider an organized tour.

We spent many cold hours of sunrise and sunset trying to catch that perfect time-lapse.
The results were worth the frozen fingertips aggravatingly trying to readjust a frigid metal tripod, just so, in the dark.

All in all, the Rocky Mountain pit stop was a really perfect way for us to warm up our exploration legs. In a sense, it felt like finding our way back home, albeit before anyone’s had time to turn on the heat :P

That’s why we chose to choreograph the video to the tune of Patrick Watson’s “lighthouse”