I’m not sure that bears have ever been down to Fish Creek Provincial Park. Stranger things have happened. Is there a little Black Bear, way out there? I certainly would be here if I ate fish for breakfast, especially because the western slopes and entire City of Calgary are covered in a blanket of fresh snow.
The storm yesterday was turbid, the worst all year. The remnants on city streets this early morning include windrows of plowed ice chunks, and yellow tape waving us around the scattered vehicles imprisoned on Sarcee. We wind our way through the apocalyptic scene of cars abandoned in both lanes.
We scrape through the icy streets down to the park gates that are…closed until 8 am. It’s 7:30 and we’re here to make fresh tracks. I can’t wait to walk! I whine and pace in the back seat of the car until we find a right-of-way that allows us access into the park.
Oh my it is still below freezing. The landscape looks deceptively barren in all directions. We bound through fresh snow that is in all places deeper than my knees. It is a sunny morning that is in sharp contrast to yesterday’s opaque evening skies. We head straight towards the creek to avoid an unassuming wind and cold that dare us to cut our walk short. We find shelter beneath the banks. The water is the dark colour of liquid hematite being melted by the sun. We’re surrounded by birdsong and the beat of crunching snow under our paws on a whispering, white background.
We are most certainly alone and begin to wonder about the company of predators. This is a wildlife sanctuary in the middle of Calgary. Around the corner we see a small herd of deer rushing from the trees through the clearing on the other side. We go to join them, or at least I try, but I’m on leash. We see a small round figure in the clearing. Our active imaginations intuit a bear at first. It turns out to be a bush.
We could walk on, but we’ve already spent hours on this frontier and we’re ready for a hot coffee.
Adventure Shepherd 