Seriously! She was/IS like a woman obsessed when there's an opportunity for some pyromania!! Global warming!? Carbon foorprints!? Phah!! She couldn't be happier than when she is in posession of some kindling, a nice chunk of flint, a hard sharp object to strike it against, some small animal fur, an entire days worth of print from a small town in Belgium, a gallon or two of kerosene, a ray of sunlight and a magnifying glass (preferably one from the top floor of a Scottish lighthouse), two sticks and a box of Swan Vestas. When it comes to fire, Linda is stark raving mad!! Nothing was safe, if it wasn't fastened down and it wasn't wet, the safety curtain was drawn back and it got thrown onto the hearth like a sacraficial animal while she danced around the cabin flailing her arms, well her left one at least, and chanting like an over-enthusiastic guest at a Hawaiian fire circle beach party.
During our trip to Jasper National Park we stayed in a fantastic log cabin, surrounded by pine trees, watched over by Whistlers Mountain and overlooking the Athabasca River beyond the short lawn. http://www.alpinevillagejasper.com
This was our cabin for the week, what a glorious setting it is and inside and out one couldn't help but feel relaxed and perhaps inspired to go and live in the great outdoors. Birds, trees, water, mountains, snow, blue sky, white fluffy clouds, small animals, large animals, more trees were just a few of the things we could see out of the windows and from the porch. It was completely gorgeous and romantic and best of all for Linda, it was beautifully cosy inside and it had a log fire!
Take a good long hard look at Linda's face, we should have done that too because for the rest of our stay all we saw was her backside as she stoked and poked until the wee small hours, EVERY night. She must have burned her/our way through a small hillside of trees, more firelighters than you could shake a bottle of highly flammable lighter fluid and a box, no three boxes of matches at, and in my opinion she is more than likely singularly responsible for a whole new layer of ozone disappearing forever. Was she happy!? Oh yes! Like Elvis with a cheeseburger!
The cabin is in a lovely setting, this is the view from the front porch, the Athabasca turning a sharp sweeping corner just outside. We regularly saw rafts of screaming people going by...
Katie, bless her, as much as she tried, never actually got to strike a single match, or place a single stick on the fire. She did help Linda to gather sticks, and pine cones, oh my Lord, the pine cones!.... but her only real compensation for all that hard graft was that she did get to cook our dinner one night, outside! 
Linda of course lit the fire on the barbeque, and lit it again, then scrunched up and stuffed more paper into it, added more charcoal, more paper, wood, and then finally after about 2 hours she fired a jet of lighting fluid over some more scrunched up paper, and opened up the gates of Hades, well.. the grill of the BBQ and threw it on! Success!
The meal was fabulous. We made bacon and cheese minced steak burgers and sat out on the porch enjoying them... and some wine.... eventually. You can see by the jackets that it was getting late.
Damn good job though! If you ever need a BBQ chef, Katie is your girl and I can highly recommend her abilities. Junior Master Chef, Alberta style :-)
Sarah meanwhile had a nervous breakdown from the near starvation and the trauma of watching, listening to Linda usurp the laws of physics and chemistry in her attempts to set alight the park, and during which time she put her nose just a little too far into her Little Booky Wook (she was reading Russel Brands autobiography at this time...)
The surrounding scenery is amazing and it's hard to believe the colour of the water at first. More about that later on... We regularly walked up from the site to Jasper town centre which was up through enchanting woodland pathways and over rivers between the trees. This view is from the back of the Tekarra Restaurant which was the nearest to us, about a 20 minute stroll along the Athabasca River.
What a special place! On the expensive side perhaps but such a wonderful setting. A really rustic dining room settled in amongst the pines. Traditional service, fabulous cocktails, frequented apparently by many celebrities including Marilyn Monroe and more recently John Travolta. No wonder, the food is amazing. All their dishes are created from fresh ingredients by world renowned chef David George Husereau. I had Bison. Well.... Why not!? The wildlife around the Apline Village is plentiful and one night, we had such a treat...
"Wow!! Look at that!!" Linda cried out and for a change she wasn't holding a match. Just outside our bedroom window was this Elk gently grazing on the lawn. We crept out (just like that cat in the crypt) onto the front porch and saw that there was more... Many more! We were lucky enough to be able to walk over to the river bank wihout getting too near to the herd or disturbing them and I still can't believe that we stayed for over an hour watching these fabulous beasts grazing, drinking, and the younger ones frollicking around in in the water.
You can't tell from these pictures but it was actually quite dark being around 22:00.
The Elk were eventually chased away by the staff of Alpine Village, apparently because they like to come onto site and eat all the flowers.
The locals call the Elk "Wapiti" (woppitee). They are very similar to our native Red Deer here in the UK but I believe they can grow much larger. One of them had a collar on it and we later found out that this is an identification tag. If an animal hurts a human, they get tagged. White=1 incident, yellow = twice, etc.. Three strikes and they are out! How annoying this is when you see the tourists hounding them and trying to get closer and closer all of the time just to get a snapshot with their four year old standing within touching or goring distance.
I promise that we were at a safe and respectful distance and I only managed to get these shots thanks to the power of camera and lens technology. The most beautiful and unforgettable moment of this evening, if not of my life so far, was when Sarah really connected with the fact that were among genuinely wild animals, in their natural domain, and yet as long as we didn't disturb them, they were happy to let us watch. It was a genuinely moving experience for me when she told me how thrilled she was to be there, and how truly special a moment this was always going to be for her...
Here she is, taking in the view and a few rays the next morning just across the road from our cabin. More scenery from behind the Tekkara...
Oh yes... another of our regular cabin visitors. This little guy was very entertaining! An American Robin. About the same size as our own Blackbird, perhaps a little bigger, he constantly filled up his beak with as many worms as possible from in the lawn. I tried to count them several times but he wouldn't let me.
Then there was this chap... When Linda wasn't burning stuff she watched him dig up his nuts and stuff from just infront of the cabin next door, and then he'd hop along our balcony and bury it all over again just feet away.
He was quite tame really, and didn't mind having a lens shoved at him. When he'd had enough though, he always let me know in the most vocal way he could. Noisy little Tufty!
The last picture in this episode sums up for me what all this was and is about... Getting away from it all, switching off, drinking in the amazing surroundings, the cleanliness of it all, the sheer peacefulness, the beauty, the absolute tranquility of Jasper National Park. Not a care in the world, not a sound to disturb the moment, whatever that moment may be, and this little girl in the picture like many before her over generations and generations, just totally chilled out and happy with a view of the river and the mountains, a belly full of milk and cookies and her new stuffed toy 'Monty, the Mounty Moose' to keep her company.
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