I am sitting on a decorative lawn chair on the deck outside the office of the Mount Baker RV Park in the Cranbrook evening. It’s here I can get the best wireless connection for my laptop, but my fingers are numb from the cold. I want to write more than this, but I am, to be honest, experiencing sensory overload.

After four days travelling by car mostly along the Crowsnest Highway I am mentally spent. I’ve seen the landscape change from familiar mountains to desert and ranch lands, then vineyards and more mountains. There’s been waits for cows to cross the road, manic breaks to watch fleeing elk and U-turns on lonely stretches of pavement to reexamine what was a fleeting glimpse while going 100 kilometres an hour.

There’s many stories to tell. Of plans gone awry. Of fences and more fences and more fences and more fences by the road. The drive over the Kootenay Pass. My first glimpse of the Canadian Rockies and the excited chills. A little grey tent among RVs and pickup trucks. And the tour of the historic Fort Steele. I want to write them down and the words bounce in the dark recesses of my mind, but won’t form on the white screen of the monitor.