We stopped for lunch at the Athabasca Glacier, our food spread out on the tailgate of a pickup alongside Highway 93, right in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. On the crest of the range, the imposing and yet rapidly disappearing remnant of a previous ice age spreads out across the sky, a stark reminder of how small and finite we humans really are, but also of how even these comparatively frail frames of ours can have a disproportionate effect on the environment in which we live and move and have our being. When we pulled into the parking lot, we were greeted by zero degree temperatures and six-foot high snowbanks, both of which seemed strangely out of place given the mild weather and complete lack of snow in Calgary, where this road trip of ours began. In fact, though, it would be more accurate to say that this road trip began several years ago, when my longtime friend and mentor, Tom, first encouraged me to come and see what he was up to. There was a stretch of more than a decade whe
"As a novelist no less than as a teacher, I try not to stack the deck unduly but always let doubt and darkness have their say along with faith and hope, not just because it is good apologetics - woe to him who tries to make it look simple and easy - but because to do it any other way would be to be less than true to the elements of doubt and darkness that exist in myself no less than in others." - Frederick Buechner, Now and Then