Blog: Ramblings and Rants

Downtown Calgary (in the province of Alberta, Canada) is blanketed in soft, ivory strips of snow. From dawn until this hour, late in the evening, tiny glittering fragments of frozen sky, have without break, drifted down from the blue-grey ceiling.

With each blink the streets, sidewalks, roofs, and skeletal trees in this magnificant Northwestern city twinkle and shimmer as if half imagined. Calgary, North America’s third largest city—in area, though she is home to fewer than 1 million souls—is booming. Between her bustling streets new buildings of colored glass and mirror reflect the sparkle of falling snow.

In a genuis of civil and social engineering, most of the downtown buildings comprise an elaborate network of tunnels—nearly two miles of heated, enclosed walkways and a bustling, sprawling shopping mall spreading out in long one- to four-story segments within and through a dozen office buildings and crossing as many streets. This series of tunnels, called “+15″ for its second-story height above street level, allows Calgarians (and the occassional visitor like myself) to cross from one side of the city clear to the other side without ever traversing the elements.

Of course, on this evening, I avoided +15.

To avoid the beauty of the winding falls of snow, to miss its melodious hush, would have been a crime against one’s self on par with visiting the Louvre and avoiding the Mona Lisa. Instead I revelled in it, strolling a few miles, my feet shuffling virgin powder before them. A smile floated ever on my lips, even as I squinted my eyes against the driving flakes. And the smell—oh, the scent of snow!—was wonderous, like breathing deep of the sweet nectar of childhood innocense.

From the snow I only retreated once, and that briefly. It was to add Calgary’s light rail C-Train to my subway ride collection, becoming the first I have ridden beyond the borders of the United States. Though the ride from downtown to the northwest end of the line—the snow-frayed residential edge of the mammoth city—insulated me from the real beauty of the weather, it allowed me to see many more whited-out hills, buildings, roads, and people than would have merely strolling.

As I sit in my hotel room, the late-night grey sky continues to triturate, raining its glittering shards about the landscape of skyscrapers, streets, parks, and river. Oh, it’s beautiful!

Never before has a city wished upon me so kind a farewell as Calgary’s white-hush good-bye kiss. I shall miss her.

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