Point of Departure

Life in the Canadian prairies had heightened our imagination. With nothing but farmland as far as the eye could see, it's understandable that we craved a view. So the sunset sky, where the blue horizon met vivid pink and orange, became our oceanfront. Fluffy white clouds navigated the mirage like distant sailboats and the cry of the gulls in any parking lot could perfect this intoxicating illusion. We'd never touch those waters or smell the salt in the air, but we could dream. However lovely the ocean, every prairie citizen can attest to the draw of the mountains, so vastly different from our flatlands. It was on those days when the clouds swelled purple in the sky, huge and imposing above the edge of the world, that we felt awe and longed for more than that pretend prairie mountainscape.

Fuelled by our mountainous desire, my family cruised down a well-kept highway in the American state of Montana. I held a camera previously filled with photos of the cloud-mountains, finally hoping to catch a glimpse of the real thing for the first time in my nineteen years.

“There's a tiny cloud up there all alone,” my dad said from the driver’s seat. Bright and squiggly, it stood out in the clear sky. We cloud aficionados watched it from our windows. As the miles chugged along, the little cloud was our Northern Star in the south, guiding us forward. Gradually, almost imperceptible lines started appearing on either side of the cloud. I traced them with my eyes and felt my heart quicken. A trick of the light?

“No,” I started, unable to take my eyes off of the disappearing cloud. For in its place, impossibly high above us, something else was starting to take shape. "I don't think that's a cloud.”

We re-evaluated the white spatter overhead."That's definitely a cloud,” someone said at last. Bets were placed, positions weighed. It's too high up to be a mountain; too white, too hazy. Do you really think we wouldn't know if we were looking at a mountain? We'll get to them, don’t worry. No, look, it definitely is! What about the lines? Yes. No. Could it be?

“Wait a minute,” my dad, the last holdout, said suddenly. “You're right.”

As if his admission finally brought it into existence, the snowy peak stood stark white and prouder than any cloud against the eggshell blue of the Montana sky.

We couldn't help but laugh as the lines solidified into slopes and our first real mountain revealed itself from the fading hints of the illusory cloud.