I didn’t realize it until I compared dates on images, but I found myself standing at a spot with a camera today where I stood on this same day two years ago with my friend Ray. It was Canmore Reservoir, just below the Canmore Nordic Centre. This is within a few minutes drive of Canmore, Alberta.
The weather was very mild and pleasant today, freakishly howling wind aside. It was trying to push us off the highway as we drove to Canmore and it managed to find places to whomp us in town. The reservoir itself was sheltered enough from the wind that the water gave me a nice reflection of Mount Something Something.
My wife and I wound up on the opposite side of the lake that Ray and I were on back in 2022. We were standing just to the right of the brown building at the shore to take the top image. The big difference was that the temperature was nearly 20C in 2024 and about -20C in 2022. That’s a lot!
It was on the 2022 trip that I first realized how ill Ray was. I was used to him always being healthier than me no matter what we were doing. Not this trip. He was shaky. He tired easily. He was unable to carry his own gear so I carried it for him. He quickly tired of holding a camera body and reverted to using his iPhone as it made his hands shake less. His prostate was so bad that he couldn’t even take a whiz without first inserting a catheter. It was horrible to see.
All that being said, I treasure every memory and photo from the 2022 trip. We had been planning a follow-up trip a year later in November of 2023, but Ray told me to hold off planning and just come and see him in Leduc instead. He didn’t think he had the juice left to make it to Canmore and it turned out that he wasn’t wrong.
So, yeah, I had the feels today walking around Canmore and remembering the stores I went into with Ray, the condo we stayed in, the places where we had coffee, and where we stopped to shoot. It was tough. It was also wonderful.
Top and bottom images made using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone. Middle image made using a Samsung Galaxy S21+ phone. Samsung owns my soul.
