The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  Heading back down to the plains we called in on Ötzi, the Iceman who had fallen foul of a rival or maybe fatally slipped 5,000 years ago. Peered at through the porthole of his public tomb where he now rests in temperature- and moisture-controlled peace, his mahogany skin, tautened over bones and ligaments, shone as if polished like a favourite pair of shoes. One long arm was thrown defensively across his face as though in anticipation of a blow but now he looked helpless, cold and distraught with his arm shielding the gaze of the curious.

  On reaching the plains, the massive marble slabs of Verona’s pavements so reflected the heat of the northern Italian sun that it seemed that each of 10,000 tourists skipped lightly along their flagged route for fear of sizzling like a suckling pig. No wonder that gelati in 14 flavours and a corresponding palette were cooled at every other street corner. Awnings were stretched out on mechanical arms of astonishing length and width to shade those weary of Juliet, the cream and terracotta striped façades of the 12th century, renaissance palaces of conspiring princes, aggressive yet attractive market stalls and fashion shops with absurd prices. San Zeno Maggiore, a 14th century Romanesque church of sublime simplicity, frescoed walls and refreshing coolness was an antidote for these tourist lures. Its cloisters provided rest for feet and eyes and the opportunity for contemplation. The River Adige, clouded with alpine silt, washed the city’s northern boundary, the fortifications against Napoleonic invasion massively formed the western edge and to the south, the land widened to the gentle contours of the Po. But at the centre, like a kernel of vitality within its succulent but soporific shield, lay the roman Arena. Forty one tiers of precision joined marble blocks formed an elliptical masterpiece and seated 25,000. During the Verona Opera Season, the stage is so vast and the theatrical settings so monumental that only half this number can be entertained but so perfect are the acoustics that under open skies, the softest pianissimo brings tears to those in the highest and furthest tier. In the first century, the arched perimeter would have been crowded with those anxious to witness the blood of wild beasts or the death of a gladiator. For us in the 21st century, the blood was Carmen’s and the tragedy Tosca’s.

  Leaving the Arena at 1 am, pushing through curtains of crimson velvet a storey high and joining the throng of post-opera diners, I spotted a group of handsome, tanned men, with black or blackened gelled hair, wearing purple track suits and surrounded by adoring young women; ACF Florentina were on their way home.

  Canada

  September 2008

  ‘A man travels the world to discover what he needs and returns home to find it’

  – Thomas Moore

  It was only clouds that were stampeding in Calgary at 4 pm on September 11th but they were also competing to see which could dump the most rain. The immigration officials were in flak jackets, the car hire procedure had been unnecessarily long and the official grumpy, it was rush hour, the traffic on the TransCanada Highway crawled through the town and we were on 2 am UK time

  But Banff banished the Calgary blues. Its homely architecture in pine and stone and its streets named Elk, Wolf, Beaver and ten more seemed charming, like some child’s game, and early snow had dusted the mountains that surrounded the town. All this cheered the spirit and astonished the eye. But at this southern tip of the Canadian Rockies this girdle of grandeur was just a teaser for what was to come.

  Towering sternly over the town in turreted magnificence was the Banff Springs Hotel. Completed in 1888 by the Canadian Pacific Railway, it was in its day (and its day lasted many years) the most magnificent hotel in Canada. Chateau Louise up the road would attract more publicity later. We approached the hotel from behind, climbing up steeply from Bow River and skirmished around its cavernous interior, universally decorated with mock stone walls and wall lights in the form of braziers; only the paisley carpet constrained the resemblance to a medieval dungeon. Enquiring of foreign maids as to the whereabouts of the lobby, alarmingly they did not know. Like moles, we eventually surfaced for an eight dollar hot chocolate and an astonishing view. In the lobby there was a display of old photographs, menus and the bills of previous guests who came for three months and trundled off in Brewsters’ charabancs to gasp in wonder at nature’s magnificence and return for jellied consommé, boiled gammon, peach melba and a foxtrot or two.

  We knew Moraine Lake was near when we came upon the cars parked four miles (6.5kms) from its shores. It was after all a glorious sunny Sunday and the lake, with its water of aquamarine surrounded by fearsome mountains and a couple of glaciers, was displayed in astonishing beauty. From above, the water looked clouded as if in solidified solution, as though all the artisans of Murano had conspired to pour in molten glass and tint it with Titian blue. But nearer to the surface a strange and magic mutation occurred; the milkiness dissolved, the solidity vanished and in its place was water of such exceptional clarity that stones and sodden tree trunks were clearly visible 13 ft (4m) down. Our hotel (the only one there) had the only canoes and we paddled one of these across this magical surface to escape the visitors from the tour buses and the four mile queue. Our course mirrored the saw-toothed silhouette of the mountains and no doubt caused amusement to the shore-based.

  By 6.30 pm, the last visitor had gone, the magic lake turned from Titian to gentian, its 3,200 ft (1,000m) granite walls took on a wet on wet wash of pink, indigo, straw and violet and the forest with its lynx, elk and bears became exclusively ours. We listened to its noises in the night where, in the honeymoon suite, we searched for each other in a bed ten feet (3m) wide.

  The weather was so close to perfection that it seemed that every jagged peak was etched with the precision of Durer. Each glacial lake was dyed with a turbid tincture of cobalt, azure, sapphire or emerald and their shores scumbled with chrome yellow larches and poplars gilded with the richest butter. When all this delight is augmented by a backdrop of glaciers that overhang or burnish the highest summits, the scene is almost too intense. And such scenes come readily along the Promenade de Glaciers – The Icefields Parkway and left us gasping as we tried to absorb one view before the next usurped it. Here were formidable ramparts of sheer granite with serrated ridges as if they had sawn their way through the earth’s crust. I have travelled some of the world’s great mountain highways – the Karakoram, the Ollague in the Chilean Andes, Sapa to Dien Bien Phu, Kathmandu to Lhasa and the Valeta in the Pyrenees but this beat them all.

  Jasper, at the northern end of this wondrous road, had a backwoods feel and attitude. Jaunty but purposeful, tidy and colourful, its low rise, clapboard houses were painted in placid shades that soothed our restless eyes. Front gardens were still bright with autumn flowers but in two months they would be insulated under six feet (2m) of snow. Our hotel, Jasper Park Lodge, which had looked so attractive on its polished website, was a mini town with its main building fashioned like an overgrown railway station in which vacationing parties wandered, helpless and lost in its internal maze. Our ‘deluxe with sitting area’ was in a distant siding and came with an invitation to call Bites on a Bike for ‘snacks and beverage’. So awful and alien was all this that we drove into town each morning for a cosy and cheerful Breakfast Special at the Grizzly Inn along with maintenance men, long distance bikers and bleary-eyed motorhomers.

  The genuine railway terminus would have fitted snugly into the front hall of the mock one and was adorned with geraniums and a totem pole and here we clambered up from the pavement level to board The Skeena and a two day train trip west to the Pacific. In the Caribou Mountains we stopped at McBride, one of many quintessential railway communities with its cluster of wooden houses, a general store, a farm shop advertising ‘Feed and Hay’ and swarthy men who strolled around in dungarees. The little Victorian station building was jolly with nasturtiums and petunias. The track doubled up here to allow trains to pass – and what trains! It needed half an hour for them to rumble through, one with flat cars loaded with cut, planed, kiln-dried and shrink-wrapped timber – 102 cars and just under a mile lo
ng. The other, with containers stacked two high and with four engines, was even longer. Both were en route to or from Prince Rupert and its deep water port.

  Now virtually nationalised, the Canadian railway system amalgamated Canadian Pacific Railways (Can’t Pay the Rent), Canadian National Rail (Certainly No Rush) and Grand Trunk Pacific (Get There Perhaps). The Skeena was independent of these but was a nostalgic reminder of the 1950s and a designer’s dream with its stainless steel VistaDome internally fitted out with Perspex, vinyl and glass mosaics. Here were the ghosts of Gregory Peck and Maureen Swanson, the clink of cocktail glasses and laughter. These ghosts were banished by a party from the American equivalent of SAGA who busied themselves with fat books of Su Doku puzzles and when halted by the ‘Malicious’ section, turned to discussing their medical problems real and imagined. In our mid-60s, we had felt the youngest on board by 20 years but were now depressingly well prepared for a variety of problems we had not yet considered. As we trundled along, thistledown and fireweed growing on the track side was scattered like an early snowstorm and were reflected on the surface of the numerous lakes as we passed. On the second day, the names of Scottish and Irish pioneers give way to native Indian glottalstoppers such as Gitwinksihlkw, Ginglox and Gitwangak and then we rolled downhill through mists beside the Fraser River, surprisingly the home of sturgeon – North America’s oldest and largest freshwater fish.

  The Inland Passage is not part of a digestive system but the route of British Columbia Ferries that twists through the many hundreds of islands of the West Coast. Every island, creek and community has a name from the pioneering settlers of the 18th century interspersed with a few of those from of the native Indians – oops, First Nation, but give a patronising nod towards the royal family of the time: Prince Rupert on the Alaskan border is followed southerly by Queen Char lotte, Princess Royal and then Victoria on the Washington State border.

  On a day that a storm blew in from the Pacific raising the waves of Johnstone Strait to a height that led to our grizzly bear expedition being cancelled, we killed time by a trip to Alert Bay. Confusingly, this is an island and it was about as alert as the crowd of crows that languidly pecked at the rubbish that rotted in every corner. The island was home to Namgis Indians and was a miserable, unkempt and sad place. When tired of a sofa, washing machine or child’s toy, it was thrown out on to the front lawn. Slim was size 18 and shoppers heaved themselves out of large, rusty pickups to stock up on a fresh supply of the carbohydrates that made up an unhealthy proportion of the single supermarket’s shelves. In the Memorial Park – a room-sized paved area beside the jetty – we lunched off a sandwich that would have fed a family. In a corner was a tablet whose carved inscription recognized the achievements of Gilbert Popovich, an ex-mayor. Ending ‘He lived with grace’, some wag had added ‘but died with Gretel’.

  But we got to see our grizzlies another day. On Vancouver Island there are only vegetarian black bears (ursus ursus) and on the mainland, only omnivore grizzlies (ursus horribilis) and consequently they seldom meet and would never wish to socialise. At this time of year, pacific, pink and sockeye salmon were spawning in succession and provide an irresistible meal for grizzlies so, after a bumpy ride on the open water of the strait, we found ourselves dressed in bright orange survival suits stumbling though undergrowth to a fenced platform overlooking the junction of two gravel streams. A presumption that any sensible bear would have spotted us and scampered off in fright fortuitously turned out to be mistaken. Over a couple of hours, five females wandered through, one teetering with her cub on a rock mid-stream as she taught it the tricks of salmon fishing while others took a casual attitude to the fish that could be clearly seen in the water. A huge male, with a malicious look in his eye and claws long enough to flay an ox, came along and we held our breath and focussed our cameras in case he took a fancy to a female or tragically attacked the cub, but in the event he went on his way as he had arrived, irritable and ill-tempered. Bald eagles, with scowling expressions and ferocious beaks, perched patiently in pine trees dripping with Spanish moss, waiting to clash over the prize of a fishy scrap.

  The Pacific Rim National Park is a slender strip of white sand, backed by some of the last primary rainforest in Canada and runs for 81 miles (130kms) along the west coast of Vancouver Island. This ancient forest that has been spared devastating fire and nurtured by the buckets of rain that are tipped up by the clouds hitting their first landfall in 3,000 miles, contains trees of astonishing grandeur and maturity. The four major species – western hemlock, douglas fir, sitka spruce and western red cedar, can all reach well over 260 ft (80m) at which height they would be at least 500 years old and the grandfathers amongst them would have been mature at the time of Christ. At the northern end of this unspoilt wild and windswept park lay Tofino – a fishing village out of season and an overcrowded tourist trap in season. Its clapboard façades reflected the sultry colours of the landscape and weather with a meld of olive drab, murky green, rusty red, cedar brown and sky grey. Smart, waterside summer houses are mixed in with the shabby homes of the first nations Indians whose wastrel teenagers roamed the streets mid-morning chewing on crisps and wedges of pizza so large that they might have been sliced from a millstone.

  On 30th September we were on the seasonal cusp and the Visitor Centre had already closed but at the Wickanninish Inn where we lodged (a far grander establishment than its name might imply), they relished the coming winter, advertising a special rate for the storm watching season. Our room on a top floor corner with vast windows looking west was clearly a favourite with honeymooners, since the folksy guest book recounted the names of at least a dozen couples who had got married on the beach and no doubt started their married life sighing at the beauty of a Pacific sunset. There was a bald eagle perched in a nearby ancient hemlock and a couple of blue jays squabbled in a stunted sitka spruce that overhung the balcony. Our chambermaid left a personal note to say she had seen us on the beach and hoped we had had a lovely day, and the fresh flower arrangement in the lobby Gents would have been the envy of Moyses Stevens. It was that sort of place.

  At the moment that the morning sun lights up the mountain tops to the east of the city of Vancouver, the harbour area of Canada Place wakes up. Float planes and helicopters zoom in, ferries crisscross the bay, trains local and transnational hoot their arrival and giant cranes dip and swing as they attend to container ships. We observed all this activity with wonder and interest from our waterfront hotel. A few miles to the west on Vancouver Island, an eagle would have viewed a less active scene but from the branches of an ancient douglas fir that would have reached four storeys higher than our room on the 22nd floor.

  Postcard Home

  The Rockies are stunning, the weather is gorgeous,

  The leaves butter yellow, the mountains stupendous.

  We’ve done Yoho, Banff, Jasper, Sunwapta and Wanka,

  Tomorrow two days in a train, then up anchor

  For islands, moose, eagles, elks, whales, wolves and bears

  Three days full of thrills but sore derrieres!

  Burma IV

  March 2009

  ‘A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talents (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place’ – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  The scent of jasmine and frangipani lay so heavily in the room that it seemed reluctant to be disturbed but a lazy fan gently stirred the sweet, exquisite fragrance while the barbets chatted in the callistemon outside the shuttered windows. By the street entrance stood a soldier of unquestioning alertness, an AK-47 cradled in his left arm and under his helmet were eyes that scanned the movements along this road of embassies. Cocooned in the teak-built Governor’s Residence in Rangoon, I was back to my roots again.

  Pa-an straggles along the muddy banks on the Salween River, 150 miles (240kms) to the east of Rangoon, as the crow flies across the Gulf of Mar
taban. It is an old and bustling town that marks the last gasp of the river before it broadens to end its journey from the Himalayas at Moulmein, an hour’s boat trip to the south. The Zwe Kaybin Pagoda Festival was in full swing and we visited this three day jamboree when it reached its loudest and jolliest on the night of the full moon. From every part, banks of Tannoys hurled out deafening music with a different tune for each stall; whistles and drums competed for attention and bingo callers were amplified to the point of pain. All manner of lighting was employed and in descending order of stall keeper affluence, strobes flashed, fluorescent tubes threw flat stark shadows, bulbs shone with naked effulgence, coloured lights winked, paraffin lamps glowed and candles flickered. Gambling and food were the predominant attractions. The former mostly comprised a square of canvas painted with numbered squares onto which the punter piled his money. A dice was then rolled, a disk twirled or a drum revolved to determine the winner. There must have been 100 or more of these in many variants but I never discovered how the owner controlled the odds. Charlatans abounded with exponents of the Three Card Trick, Guess the Dice and the usual devices to fleece the gullible and all were doing good business. There is nothing a Burmese enjoys more (or is worse at) than gambling. Food came bright or brown; the bright was lurid with clashing colours of incandescent intensity. Ice cream, dyed desiccated coconut and drinks all played their part in this edible kaleidoscope. Near the entrance, a lady stall owner had spooned jelly of hideous hues on to slices of white bread which in turn were balanced on upturned glasses. Each ghastly arrangement trembled like some exotic sea slug sending out danger signals to potential exterminators. The brown food was curries, roasted meats, kebabs and a miscellany of offal and entrails in tones of umber and maroon. At the centre of these festivities was a Ferris wheel on which were suspended four seater bamboo cages. At first sight, it seemed that agile but foolhardy young men were daringly hanging beneath these cages while others clambered through the rotating spokes. However, these men were the engine of this machine. After coming to rest to change passengers, the foreman blew a whistle and with great speed and energy, half a dozen of these longyi skirted gymnasts climbed to their positions around the wheel so that their combined weight started the revolutions. As speed increased so did their actions – swinging from seats, jumping from one to another, pushing with their feet or riding the outer circumference. Here was manpower at its most literal. As a spectator sport it was fascinating for surely one of the human components of this fly wheel would fall.