alberta | arielle lok

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20072023 - growing up and realizing the beauty of alberta

i used to speak of my hometown with disgust, but coming home for 2 weeks with new friends and exploring streets with old friends makes me realize how much of an utter FOOL i have been played for. what kind of bum ass city just has beautiful mountains an hour drive away? spoiler: IT IS SIMPLY NOT A BUM CITY. IT IS CALGARY. we drove an hour the opposite direction and was transported into a prehistoric land bountiful of dinosaur fossils. there is a whole ass t-rex fossil/casting! i could not stop smiling like an utter IDIOT. every time i go to the royal tyrell i forget how awesome it is that humans are even alive right now, and how luscious the earth was in the past covered in warm, tropical greenery and depths of water.

don't even get me started on banff. i used to take the mountains for granted. my high school friends and i would drive to banff and get some mid ice-cream, then casually do a hike or two. people fly from all over the world to see lake louise while that was just my every-other weekend. but… bringing my friend to lake louise for his first time and looking down at it from midway through our hike, seeing the BRIGHTEST, constant light blue spanning forever - no water i have ever seen in my life even compares! we dipped our feet in the glacier and giggled as our toes turned red. this is pure! joy!

and the inconspicuous, most wonderful part of alberta is the long drives on the highway to get to these destinations. passing by fields and fields of bright yellow canola and happy cows crowding around a single tree shade, little oil rigs shadows in the horizon and gigantic windmills putting in the work, rolling hills and fluffy clouds while blasting country and singing along. i laid flat in the back seat staring at the sun roof and life just felt right.

of course - this is only about calgary. not the latter of alberta. i still don't have many great things to say about edmonton. prove me wrong.

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