Montes Solberg

I was up at 3:40, because I have no say in the matter.

That’s how it is with me. What’s a guy to do? So, I threw on the coffee and worked for a couple of hours.

At 6:15 I was out the door, the eastern just sky starting to lighten. I had decided last night to hike up to Nose Hill. It’s about a two kilometre hioke from Casa Solberg to the hill top, half of it amongst the manicured lawns and tended yards of the suburb of Dalhousie.

I must have been the first person in the park this morning. There was the lightest of reflections on the pond in the park’s southwest corner. Then it was the long walk up the trail along a shallow ravine past aspen and Wolf Willow. By the time I hit hill top the sun was not yet above the horizon but it was light enough to see the sky-broken cloud and some promising blue.

A few birds moved ahead of me on the trail, which passes through acres of prairie and tall grass.

My way back took me through Many Owls Valley where grows perhaps the park’s biggest stand of aspen. Near the bottom of the trail a young White Tail buck blocked the trail-or a “spiker” as we would call them when I was young.

God knows why but those walks in the woods and across the prairies always makes me inordinately happy, grateful and strangely proud.

Now I must head off to vote soon for the next leader of the PC Party of Alberta.

I’ll support Ted Morton, in part because Ted gets it. He also knows that the land and unspoiled nature is part of what makes Albertans independent and strong. In fact it’s at the core of what makes Alberta great.

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