Boo on me. Working so hard on my blog & gallery redesign that I totally forgot to write about Thanksgiving. And it was pretty special, since I spent it in Whistler with a few close friends. Just one day (Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon), but it was a hell of a day.
The good omens started on the drive up. It had been raining for a few days, but the weather was just then clearing up. Which meant dozens of gorgeous rainbows lining Highway 99. The first almost took my breath away, and it took all my concentration to keep my eyes on the road. Over the next couple of hours, I did get a little more used to them—and the gorgeous scenery I hadn’t seen in a while.
Then dinner, walking around a bit, and hanging out, then off to bed.
Monday promised to be clear, so I set my alarm for 6:00 to get some sunrise pics… forgetting the crucial detail that Whistler is surrounded by mountains. At 6AM it was still mostly dark, nowhere near actual sunrise. Oh well. So I wandered around, took some nice photos of Whistler in the early morning fog, went back to my room, tried to get back to sleep, couldn’t, went out again and finally saw a good sunrise over Blackcomb Mountain around 9AM. Then a few minutes later the fog came back in and hid it. Boo.
We had breakfast, walked around Whistler for a bit, then spontaneously decided to go up Whistler Mountain. What a difference 2 months makes! The last (and first) time I was there in 2003, it was August. Now snow covered the whole mountain (enough for at least one small avalanche), the hiking trails were closed, and I was kind of freezing. Sure, I was dressed warm, but obviously not enough for the mountain. Still: we kept moving, admired the scenery—and it was breathtakingly gorgeous with the fog-slash-clouds playing around the many mountains whose names I never bother to learn. Oh, and on the way down, we caught a glimpse of a mother bear out with two cubs.
We had an early turkey dinner, because most of us had to go back to Vancouver. That evening I went to see Between Heaven and Earth, part of the VIFF lineup. Excellent movie, much better than what I expected. I thought it would be about the trials and tribulations of two families of wandering circus folks in Uzbekistan. And it is about their trials, but so much more than that. The circus people are not passive recipients, they’re involved in their community, and even in national politics. There’s issues of tradition vs. modernity, faith and religion, and the greater social/economic picture of Uzbekistan. Great stuff, stark and troubling at times, but not sensationalistic.