It is quite true that pictures tell stories, and that they are worth many words, however pictures do not capture the full mood of the photographer. Even the most evocative photos still skip the back story of what lead up to the photo.
I was traveling from Kamloops to Penticton, taking my time and using highway 97. The morning was slightly cool, with very little wind. The highway is an older one, but well maintained and I was really enjoying the ride.
There are times when the road seems to stretch in a good way, when the views take their time to unfold and you can see the view slowly alter from one great vista to the next, not zipping by in hurried glimpses snatched between vehicles and tricky turns.
Monte Lake lay on the right side of the highway, with the rolling edges of mountains behind it. Pines reaching upward and patches of the hills covered in buffalo grass turning brown as the spring rains left and the summer heat hit. The intense green of the willow and other shrubs lining the lake and the few patches of bull rushes growing around the edges.
The lake itself was not quite still. Minor movement on the surface kept it from being a true mirror, but that added to the over all view, drawing your mind to the stillness implied. The sun had not risen quite enough to hit the surface of the lake, but shone strongly on the slopes above it.
There were only two boats on the water that I could see, a canoe sitting placidly with two people fishing, and near them a small boat slowly leaving a wake behind it as it trolled across the lake with an electric motor.
There was a dichotomy involved, for the view because it called for a quiet, a total lack of modern traffic noise that was not happening. The bike below me, the tunes playing in my ears, and the occasional other car or truck added their voice, but in my mind the scene called for silence and that is how I will remember it.
There was a pull out coming up, one on my side of the highway, and I could easily pull to the side and reach into the saddlebag for my camera. It would have been a slight delay with no real consequence as I was not on a time schedule.
But I rode on instead, thinking at the time that I would try to paint the picture with words, allowing my words to give echoes of my emotions, rather than capture my mood with an image.
