The Story Behind the Photograph: Gazing at the Mountains
Sunday, January 5, 2025
I can remember being there when this photograph was taken, though I don’t know exactly where there was or who took the photo? I wasn’t even aware of it being taken. I was given a copy much later by a friend who I was traveling with and who took the picture.
My mother some years later got a blown up version of the photograph and had it framed. It was from that copy that I took a digital copy of the image.
I am somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. A group of us are touring parts of the US and Canada. I am a couple of years into my twenties and starting to question a lot of things in my life. A few years before, as I came to the end of my undergraduate degree, I had gone through what I have since called an existential crises. On these travels I was still doing a lot of questioning of life. One reason for this trip was to give myself some space, to try and get a little perspective, hoping that some pieces might fall into place.
While I am not sure that many questions were answered while I was in North America, with the benefit of hindsight I take this moment as one where some pieces started to fall into place.
The grandeur of the Rockies held me. The mountains, their presence gave me a sense of home. The space afforded by the mountains’ presence, and their immensity helped my mind clear. I started to wonder what was really important? I didn’t want to leave these mountains, or I wanted something held in them?
While I didn’t have answers to my questions in that moment, I felt at peace being there. I was reluctant to leave, to leave whatever it was that this place, this view was offering me.