The Mountain and the Valley

My journey began in the Selkirk Mountains. The Selkirks are geologically older than the Rocky Mountains. (Credit: Presley Broooking)

I was twenty-two when I landed in the Wandering Fern Café in downtown Golden, British Columbia, smelling like river water and campfire smoke in black athletic hiking pants that were stained with mud and sweat, and an oversized Florida Gators sweatshirt that I had been living in for the past three days. My hair was stiff and twisted into a messy bun. I ordered a latte and sat by the window while I waited for the farmers’ market to open, thinking that it had been a long time since I felt like I was where I needed to be. 

For as long as I can remember, I had been “the hockey girl.” My childhood and teenage years were built around the rink. I spent hours in our garage with my dad, shooting pucks, passing, practising dekes and working out before and after school.

My dream was Division One university hockey. I played at the highest level, emailed coaches, spoke with universities and lived and breathed the identity everyone saw me through. Then it all collapsed. 

I suffered two concussions on the ice, then rushed my recovery so I could play in a tournament the University of Maine scouts were attending, and during that tournament, I was hit from behind. I crashed headfirst into the boards. I still remember the violent wave of nausea, lying on the ice, the lights blurring into one another. I don’t remember being helped off. But I remember the doctor’s definitive warning. He said it would be in my best interest not to play again; your brain is more important than the sport. 

The foundation of my identity, my direction, my purpose had disappeared in a single sentence.  The fall was harder than the crash into the boards. Addiction, anger, shame, losing relationships, losing myself. For three and a half years, I was falling into that dark space. Sobriety stopped the descent. But it was the mountains that showed me the long way back to the light. 

When I decided to travel to British Columbia for the summer, I didn’t know what I was looking for. For the first time in four years, I felt passion again. I was giddy and grateful to be alive. My soul craved adventure. I knew I needed to get away, to be alone, to face the parts of myself I had numbed for years, to move my body, to breathe fresh air, and to experience something bigger than the life I had been trapped inside. I packed my car with everything I owned and began my six-day drive heading west to a small town called Invermere, British Columbia, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I called this place home for the next five months. 

That morning in Golden, curled up in a white chair at the Wandering Fern Café, sipping my latte, enthralled in my book, I felt the sensation of being watched. When I looked up, I saw a lady staring at me. She posed no threat, and there was something gentle about her. She looked to be in her mid-forties, with blonde hair and long, dangly earrings that brushed her shoulders each time she moved. Thick, chunky bracelets stacked up her wrists, catching the light. She wore a Barbie-pink shirt and white, flowy pants, like someone who had wandered out of a different world and into this mountain café by accident. 

I gave her a small, polite smile, the kind you give a stranger when you make eye contact in passing. In a gentle, calm voice, she asked if she could join me, and I said yes. The café was nearly empty. I had just spent three days alone, and I have always enjoyed getting to know strangers. She sat down and smiled at me. She said her name was Kathrine. After a moment of small talk, she said she was drawn to me to deliver a message, that her guides were telling her to give me 

a reading. She said she was a psychic medium who reads oracles. I have always been intrigued by spiritual practices, and had nothing to lose, so I smiled and let her. 

She reached across the table and gently took my hands. Her hands were warm and soft. She held mine and stared into my eyes for what felt like a long time, long enough for me to become aware of my own breathing, and of the fact that I was letting a stranger hold my hands in a quiet café in the middle of the Rockies. There was a fall, she said, finally, a fall that changed your life. 

Then she began to shuffle her oracle cards. She drew two, both similar as they had pictures of a man on them, the only difference being one in a red suit and one in a black suit. Kathrine examined them for a moment. 

“One is your past, and one is your future,” she said. “Your guides are telling me you need to write, record everything.”  

And one more thing, she told me: altitude will guide you and lead you to your divine path. I thanked her. She squeezed my hands, smiled, and then just left. No lingering, no business card, no upsell or small talk. It felt like whatever she was meant to do had been done. When the door closed behind her, I pulled my journal out of my bag. Journaling had become the only way I knew how to clear my head. It was the outlet that held all the emotions I didn’t know where else to put. I flipped through the pages and returned to my account of the past three days. 

It began in the Selkirk Mountains, part of the Columbia Mountain range in British Columbia, standing at the trailhead of the Hermit Trail. I had clipped my bear spray to the front strap of my day pack. I packed light as I knew it was going to be a steady climb. I had a sourdough peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich, two apples, a few granola bars, a Nalgene full of water, and the knives my father had given me just in case for protection. 

The Selkirks are some of the oldest mountains in the province, carved by ancient glaciers and shaped from thick layers of sedimentary and metamorphic rock that have risen and folded over millions of years. Their peaks rise sharply and dramatically, steep and rugged, with long ridgelines and exposed rock faces that hold snow well into the summer. Behind them, the Columbia Icefield feeds countless creeks and waterfalls that cut through the valleys below. 

(Credit: Presley Brooking)

The trailhead was just off the Trans-Canada Highway, surrounded by massive boulders dropped by glaciers long before humans ever walked there. Even the ground felt ancient, made of fractured stone, granite slabs, and old glacial till. On paper, the hike looked short, about two and a half kilometres. The catch was the elevation, a 950-meter gain in that distance, essentially straight up. 

The trail started in the subalpine, shaded by thick cedar and hemlock trees that thrive in the wet, cool climate of the Columbia Mountains. The forest was dense, steep, and green, the air heavy with the scent of moss, pine needles, and damp earth.

The incline was sharp from the beginning, my calves burning, my breath growing louder in my ears. I was so out of breath, but I was singing my heart out on the trail because I read somewhere that to prevent bear attacks, you need to be loud and hike in groups. I was neither of those, so I sang loud and proud as I 

gasped for breath between each lyric. My lungs burning was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

I was in grizzly bear country. The forest felt like a protective tunnel, green and cool, and the air smelled like damp earth and pine needles. 

As I climbed, the sky brightened between the branches. Eventually, the trees began to thin, the cedars shrinking into subalpine firs. The trail pulled me higher until, suddenly, I broke the tree line and stepped into a different world. The alpine greeted me with Hermit Meadows, a field full of wildflowers in every colour, I could imagine.

Yellows, purples, deep reds, and soft whites nodded in the wind. Behind me, stretching as far as my eyes could see, were snow-capped peaks stacked layer upon layer into the distance. 

These were the true Selkirks, their ridges jagged from thousands of freeze-thaw cycles that crack the stone apart, leaving sharp spines and broken cliffs. Heavy winter avalanches sweep down their slopes every year, leaving long scars carved into the rock. Even in July, streaks of snow filled the gullies.  

A rough pathway of stones marked the way forward, stones that were once the remains of glacial moraines and rockfall debris fields. I stepped from rock to rock, listening. In the distance, I heard water, at first faint, then clearer, a steady rushing sound. The trail led me to a river flowing over exposed slabs of ancient bedrock and down into a small waterfall. The water was meltwater from the high snowfields above, filtered through centuries-old stone, cold and clear. 

Before this trip, I didn’t know there were rivers at the tops of mountains. I didn’t know there were grassy fields and wildflowers up there either. From far away, mountains had always looked like solid jagged rock, not living things with meadows and water and creatures hidden in their folds.

I walked through the grass, along the river, until I reached the edge and looked out at the world below. From that height, I felt tiny. Tiny but not insignificant. Tiny in the grand scheme of things, but so deeply a part of it all.  

I remember thinking how lucky I was to have a body strong enough to climb there. Not everyone gets to stand on top of a mountain and see this. How many people will live their whole lives and never feel that specific kind of awe?

I was so happy in that moment that I started to cry. It was one of the first times I understood that happiness could rise from inside me with no external trigger, no praise, no purchase, no achievement, no other person. Just me and the land. I wrote later, “The more I connect to nature, the more I feel connected to myself.” 

I sat on a sun-warmed rock and meditated, focused on my breath with my eyes closed. I don’t know how long I was there; time didn’t feel real. At some point, I felt like I slipped into another world, spacious and still. I was pulled back by a sudden movement nearby and opened my eyes to see a rugged little animal staring at me.  

At first, I thought it was some kind of mountain gopher. I’d later learn it was a marmot, a creature that lives high in the alpine. Marmots survive by burrowing into the loose, rocky soil left behind by past glaciers. It watched me for a moment, then waddled off, as if checking that I had understood I was a visitor here. When Kathrine later said, “Altitude will lead you to your divine path,” I later saw that I already knew that. She just put language to the reason I had been so drawn to climbing mountains.  

(Credit: Presley Brooking)

Up there, I felt aligned, present, free. Before heading down, I took off my boots and walked into the creek that flowed beside the trail. The water was painfully cold at first, the kind of cold that stabs. It was glacial melt funnelling down from ancient snowpacks and old icefields tucked into the Selkirk peaks. The initial shock gave way to a strange, deep relief, like pressure stored in my body for years was finally dissolving. On the way back down, all I could think was, my life will never be the same.  

The everyday problems I constantly stress about, grades, money, social pressures, timelines, all felt so small against the scale of the mountains, the age of the rock, the rhythm of the water. 

I finally arrived at my campsite around 3 p.m. I was staying at Waitabit Creek, a free recreation site tucked right beside the river, with a backdrop of mountains rising behind it like ancient sentinels. The site was situated in a valley typical of the Columbia Mountains, where the peaks on either side still retained remnants of snow and ice even into the summer.  

It looked like something out of a postcard: a fire pit, a flat spot for my tent, the turquoise river only a few steps away, rushing over smooth stones shaped by thousands of years of meltwater. I had never solo camped in my life, yet I felt no fear. After that brutal climb on the Hermit Trail and the clarity I felt at the top, I felt I could handle anything. For the first time, I was truly alone. 

No social media. No cell service. No one to text or call. Just me and nature, and the timeless sound of running water through a valley carved long before humans ever arrived. 

At first, sitting in silence was unsettling. The surrounding mountains amplified the quiet, making the world feel huge and yet intensely intimate. I could feel my brain searching for a distraction, the way your hand automatically reaches for your phone. But slowly, the silence started to feel less like emptiness and more like company. The rhythm of the river, the rustle of wind through spruce trees, and the occasional crack of a branch deeper in the forest became a kind of conversation.  

For the first time since I was a child, I felt fully free.

When I recapped my day in my journal, I wrote, “I frolicked through the woods like a little kid, no destination, no agenda. I admired every rock and branch, noticing how Mother Nature places each piece just so, creating scenes that look effortless but feel intentional.”   

I was writing as I lay on my own private beach beside the river. Later, I jumped in the water, the cold punching the breath from my lungs before I burst into laughter. I balanced rocks into stacks, practised yoga beside the river, made music out of nothing, drew messy sketches, and journaled until my hand cramped.  

One entry read, “Camping is so nourishing for the soul. It allows us to go back to our primal state, how our ancestors lived. They were present, creating, loving the earth with no phone as a distraction. It’s so nice to get away from everything and just experience life and all the fruits of it.” 

I found clarity in doing hard things and being alone. I learned to love my own company. At first, I struggled to stay fully present without any stimulation; my mind kept trying to run away from itself. But eventually, the environment softened me. The rocks warmed by the sun. The soft roar of glacial water. The way the light changed on the cliffs as the afternoon deepened. I sat on the rocks and stared at the water until my thoughts quieted, and what replaced them was a deep, overwhelming gratitude. I wrote, “Getting used to being rather than doing.”  

In that stillness, looking out at the river and mountains, I understood how important it is to step away from people, screens, and constant noise. It’s the only way you can hear yourself. At night, the mountains lit up in alpenglow, a phenomenon where the last light of the setting sun paints the peaks pink and orange before they fade to a deep violet.  

It happens because the mountains are high enough to catch sunlight that the valley floor can’t. The stars came out brighter than I had ever seen in my life, glittering like frost across the sky. The cold air on my face and the warmth of my sleeping bag created the perfect cocoon. I slept like a rock. 

In the morning, I woke with the sun and headed toward Yoho National Park. I re-entered Golden and then drove east toward the Alberta border. The mountains rise dramatically on either side of the road here, towering over the highway, turning it into a narrow ribbon threading through ancient stone.  

The Kicking Horse River ran beside me, its milky-blue colour coming from glacial 

silt ground down so fine it stays suspended in the water. Driving deeper into Yoho felt like entering a myth. The forest thickened, waterfalls spilt from high hanging valleys, and the limestone cliffs grew taller and more vertical as I wound my way through the canyon. 

It felt like I was pulling into a fairy tale as I parked my car at Takakkaw Falls. The parking lot was full of people, cameras out, kids running around, parents preparing picnics. Takakkaw Falls is the second-highest waterfall in Canada, with a total height of 373 meters. The water plummets from the Daly Glacier above, free-falling before hitting the rocks with a roar so powerful it drowns out every other sound, even your own thoughts. 

I climbed beside the falls. There was no established trail, but I followed the rock, feeling my way upward. The terrain was nearly vertical in sections, a mix of crumbly limestone, smooth slabs polished by centuries of spray, and loose scree that made me dig my fingertips into cracks for balance. I relied on my scrambling abilities, my intuition, and the rhythm of the water pulling me upward. The mist soaked my clothes, my hair, my eyelashes.  

Then I found the spot, a natural rock chair, shaped perfectly by erosion. A seat crafted by Mother Nature herself. From up there, the tourists below looked like tiny ants crawling across the valley floor. The valley opened wide beneath me, carved long ago by glaciers that scraped this entire region into a dramatic U-shape. The air smelled like wet stone and alpine wind. 

And then, like magic, a rainbow appeared in the mist. It was luminous and delicate, only visible from exactly where I was sitting. You couldn’t see it from the ground. You had to climb to that specific place to notice it. It reminded me of what the mountains had been teaching me all along: perspective is everything.  

Sometimes we can’t see the whole picture because we’re standing in the wrong place. Sometimes the most beautiful parts of our lives are hidden until we are willing to climb higher, to shift our view, to do the hard thing. You have to reach new heights to see new limits, new goals, new possibilities.

My latte was half-finished on the table. My journal was open. I wrote, “Let my inner child roam free,” and meant it with my whole heart.  

Being there brought me back to that version of myself, the kid who found joy in simple, ordinary things. I was so grateful to find her again.

Looking back now, I can see how none of this would have happened without the hardest parts of my life.  

If I hadn’t lost hockey, if I hadn’t fallen and climbed my way back out, I never would have ended up alone in the mountains of British Columbia. I never would have seen the alpenglow or felt the chill of a glacial creek or climbed to a hidden rainbow at Takakkaw Falls. I never would have discovered Hermit Trail, or Waitabit Creek, or the version of myself I met out there. 

What I do know is this: we are all dealt one card, and then another. The first is irrevocable. The second is unknown. And when I was lost, I climbed a mountain alone and there, in the altitude, I was found.