Earlier I wrote about our small Kamloops safari to Isobel Lake, where the big game was a herd of cattle and the gentle residents were a goose family on the water. The weekend before I fly to Nairobi, we went on a bigger safari still. Mama, Oksana, and Svitlana and I packed up and drove to the Kootenays, to Nakusp Hot Springs, and the land put on quite a show for us.
Here is a confession that still surprises me. I had been through the Kootenays before, more than once, but I had never stopped. I drove through on the way from Lethbridge to Kamloops. I drove through coming home from Denver and Yellowstone to Kamloops. Each time the mountains rolled past my window and I kept going, telling myself I would come back properly someday. This time, finally, someday arrived. We stopped. We stayed a whole weekend.
The animals came to greet us all along the way, as if they had heard I was leaving the continent soon and wanted to say goodbye first. We saw elk, not one but herds of them, near Castlegar around our overnight stop in Salmo, crossing the road in the golden light, single file and unhurried, the way creatures move when they know the land belongs to them. We slowed, we watched, we let them pass.
And then the bears. Two of them across the weekend, and each one a small miracle. The first met us at Shelter Bay, grazing on the grass by the water while we waited for the ferry, as if it too had somewhere to be across the lake. That is the one I managed to photograph, twice, hardly believing my luck. Oksana and Svitlana watched it, delighted. Mama, though, stayed comfortably in the car. She told me, with the easy calm of someone who has seen it all, that she had watched plenty of bears in her years here and did not need to get out for this one. And she was right. We are experienced in the Canadian wilderness now, my Mama most of all.
The second bear we saw on the way back, near Merritt, trying to cross Highway 5A, a little dark shape testing the edge of the road. That one I have only in memory, no picture, but I see it clearly still. Both times my heart did that thing it does, equal parts wonder and worry, hoping each one crossed safely and went on with its day. There was a marmot too, standing sentinel by the lake at Shelter Bay, keeping a careful eye on the ferry line. The Kootenays are generous with their wildlife.
But the heart of the weekend was the water.
I will say it plainly: I love hot springs. My body loves them even more than I do. There is a kind of relief that only mineral water and rising steam can give, a loosening of everything you did not know you were holding. Nakusp Hot Springs has two pools, and I have the proof, because I stood there grinning and pointing at the little whiteboard: the large pool at 36.6 degrees, the small one at a glorious 40. I sank in and felt twenty years of carried tension begin to let go.
And here is the gift I did not plan for: there is no internet up there. None. No email, no notifications, no half of my attention always drifting toward a screen. Just the water, the trees climbing the mountainside, the sky, and the people I love. No distractions. Only the joy. I had forgotten how loud the quiet can be once you finally let it in.
It was an educational weekend, too, the way travel always is when you let it teach you. We learned the rhythm of the ferries, the shape of the Arrow Lakes, the feel of a part of BC I had driven through so many times but never truly stopped to know. And I learned something practical: Nakusp is close enough to do as a day trip. I do not need to wait for a long weekend, and I certainly do not need to wait years. I came home already planning the next visit. I cannot believe I waited so long, and I do not intend to wait that long again.
So here is my promise to all of us. Once I am back from Africa, we will go again, just for a day, a simple hot spring experience to soak and breathe and let the mountains do their quiet work. And maybe, if we are lucky, the bear will be there once more, grazing by the water, waiting with us for the ferry.
Mama found it special. That is what stays with me most. On a day that good, with the sun cooperating and the water warm and her son beside her, she felt the specialness of it, and so did I. To give my mother a day like that, soft and unhurried and full of small wonders, is worth more than any conference, any flight, any accolade.
So this was our middle safari, bigger than Isobel Lake, smaller than the one waiting for me in Kenya. Elk and bears and a marmot, steam rising off a mountain pool, Oksana, Svitlana, Mama and I, and no wifi to pull us out of the moment. Relax, refresh, return, the sign at Nakusp says. We did all three.
Now I carry that warmth, literally and otherwise, all the way to Nairobi.
Love. Care. Share.
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