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The depth of winter in the Fraser Canyon. The snow new fallen on the ageless rock walls shows jagged contrasts of gleaming black and blinding white. It has been blizzarding on and off for the last half hour or so.  

The old year is dying and a new year being born, and we are driving down from Sorrento to the distant coast. On evening such as this the canyon is elemental, dangerous, unforgiving. The sky lies along the peaks, trailing wisps of mist into the crevasses, suddenly becoming fog in the headlights . Far below the highway the Fraser thunders toward the coast as it flows through this vast Cathedral of rock, the headlights of approaching traffic hurtling past like whirling votive candles lit against a fearful darkness. 

I decide to put on some music. I begin to listen to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Suddenly I realize an utter contrast. Here in my ears is that ultimate precision and order so beloved of an 18th century that in its time wished to bring order to both nature and humanity and to fashion them into neat predictable patterns.  At the same time, in the darkness outside the glass and steel walls of my car is an all powerful nature refusing to be ordered, insisting on being a threatening chaos around me. 

Suddenly  I realize that the reason I reached for this particular music is that  I am uncomfortable before a dark majesty that is beyond my human ordering. I am in the domain of the gods.