Icefields Parkway and scattering your ashes
The Icefields Parkway is one of the most beautiful drives in the world. It starts at Jasper in the Jasper National Park in Canada and ends at Banff in the Banff National Park. There are numerous places in the park to host a gathering for your wake. There are numerous horse trails for your guests to experience the area. Be prepared for snow and muddy trails.
Lake Louise is a busy area with hikers and skiers. The best time to see it is in the evening when all the crowds have gone. If you want to select this area to scatter your ashes, you will need to have your spirit whisperer take a hike away from the crowds and into the backcountry. An evening stroll in the summer with your guests would be a great way to be transported to your final spot for scattering your ashes.
Peyto Lake is a glacier fed lake that is a nice turquoise color and attracts a lot of crowds. You can get the best view of it from the highest point on the Icefields Parkway: Bow Summit. Until you see Peyto Lake in person, you can not understand the beauty of it. Photographs just can't capture what you will see in person. Consider a horseback ride for your spirit whisperer to take in route to your designated place to scatter ashes.
The Columbia Ice field is one of the largest non polar ice fields and it feeds 8 glaciers. A 325 square kilometer snow field melts and flows into three different oceans. The ice field can be seen from the parkway or you can hire a snow coach to travel across the ice.
So if you are interested in making the Icefields Parkway area you final destination. Take a car trip then get out and walk until you see where you would like to rejoin this beautiful piece of nature.
1 comments:
In my opinion, scattering of cremated human remains is a trend that will prove itself in the long term to be psychologically naive and even damaging. Though the idea may appeal to people who are looking for a way of avoiding our corrupted and meaningless funeral industry - and it has the attractive connotation of "returning to nature" - it also has negative long term consequences for the survivors which far out weigh these benefits:
Subconsciously it is a denial of the value of the human life that is finished - rather than honoring it with a memorial of some sort, even modest, it throws everything anonymously back to nature, as if we were only animals that life, die and decompose. (We are of course also animals, but not only).
Secondly, it makes a continuing psychological connection between the family and the deceased impossible. Rather than providing a place where family can come to remember, to reconnect with the person who meant so much to them for so long, scattering is to throw these memories to the wind. To remember, humans need concrete things to identify with. Scattering is the ultimate act of eliminating all concrete traces which may remind us of someone.
It is a nihilistic act of denying the strength of our human bonds and the hope that the relationships may continue in some subtle and inexplicable way after death. This is only possible, only conceivable because we can no longer believe in a continuation of life in some or other after-life.
If scattering becomes a widespread phenomena, it will only be for a generation or two, and then society will miss having those symbols of deeper connection and hope that cemeteries represent.
If you want to return to nature, consider green burial with a beautiful natural boulder marking your grave for your family to visit and remember you sometimes.
I hope this passes your moderation, contrary as it may be to your own beliefs....
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