Crowsnest Highway Highs and Lows

It's a long way from Vancouver to Calgary, no matter which way you go. The way I went, though, is much, much longer. Three hours longer, to be exact.
What was a ten-hour drive westward became a 13-hour drive through some of the most beautiful countryside in Canada. Southern BC is beautiful. From the lush green semi-rain-forests of the coast, to the scrubby semi-desert mountains of south central BC, to the gigantic calm and beautiful lakes and farms of the Okanagan Valley, three hours was a small price to pay. Had I had my trailer, and if I had wanted to add a month to my vacation, I would have and could have happily stopped anywhere along this trail and camped for a month. It's probably better that I didn't have my trailer, because I may have just parked somewhere out of the way, and reemerged in October when it got too cold to live in a tent trailer.
Travelling eastward, though, the landscape, though beautiful, became a little sombre. Past Creston, I was entering what was and probably still would be one of my favourite places in the world. The Crowsnest Pass was my home away from home for most of my time in Calgary. A lot of the coolest things in my life happened there; I climbed mountains, I ate food, I hiked in the hills, I swam in the lakes, but, most importantly, it was my sanctuary from what seemed at the time like an unhappy situation. I was, for the most part, miserable in my Calgary home, my free, loving, entertaining home, with my girlfriend. Of course, now I know I couldn't have had it better than rent-free living with someone you like enough to consider marrying, but life is a harsh teacher, blah blah blah.
Anyway, driving through the pass was like a reminder of what this place meant to me. There was the cave just off the train tracks where my best friend and I tried to spelunk, but where I panicked and chickened out. Further up and a little north, there was the lake in the middle of which I proposed to my first ever girlfriend, and meant it. Further from that was the abandoned coal mine we'd explore every summer, searching through the ruins for ghosts and othersuch kitch and history, while marvelling at the massive works of the tipple--the building where the mine cars once dumped all the coal into waiting railroad cars below. All this crumbling infrastructure was fascinating in its dereliction, time after time. And I always knew I could come back to the little house on 19th ave, Blairmore, where I had my first and only engagement party, surrounded by her parents, and mine. Right by the creek you could watch the trout get stuck when the water levels got low during warm summers, and move them to the Crowsnest River if they'd let you catch them. Or, if her parents weren't there that weekend, you could burn all the wood they'd cut from the gigantic lilac hedge. These all sound like childhood memories, but for someone edging up on 30 years old, they were a throwback to childhood, and a source of happiness in the simplest sense. Explore your limits in the wilds daily, and return to the family and fiancee you knew would always be there. My short three years in Calgary are punctuated with technicolour memories of this place, and more and more erupt the longer I think of it.
I passed through this town last week, and it all returned again. Finally, thinking there would be someone to stop in and visit at the old house, I passed by it, and the lights were out. All the familiar vehicles were there. I could have written the guestlist on a single line of paper: her, her parents, perhaps.
I could have written the hardest list of people not invited; the ugliest, most painful list: me. I couldn't have gone back into that house. Not the way I used to. Not the way where I knew I'd look out over the autumn leaves that last season we'd been there, where, as we closed up the house for the winter, I knew, or thought I knew, that I'd be back there. Not in the way where I'd lay together with her, or, when her parents were there, in the bottom bunk of the crappy old bunk beds, hoping for that last kiss goodnight, or whatever, from her before I'd fall off into the soundest sleep I'd ever had, and likely will have for ages, until I'm somewhere that comfortable again.
So, after a quick, shy look at a lost home that wasn't home any more, and never really was, I guess, I began the two hour trek that would take me back to Calgary, and, at least, some kind of rest. I kept the music off, and, as the moon crested over a string of foothills called the Whaleback, which I'd passed by every other time I'd been to Blairmore, I tried hard to keep my mind on other things. But, with it, and the place it led to, being the only thing I'd thought of for three years in Calgary, I eventually let my mind drift back to where it wanted to go, and silently lamented what I'd lost. Following our familiar path to Calgary, I drove alone, trying not to cry, and, more importantly, trying not to fall asleep.