pass creek

Tears sprung from my eyes and streamed down my cheeks like the water cascading over the rainbow rocks in the pictures I’d just purchased.

Photograph by Wei Wong

“Where were these taken, by the way?” I asked. “I have always admired them.”

“Pass Creek,” he said. I knew the spot. The nostalgia of it is why the tears started.

Most people wouldn’t believe such a magical place exists, but it does. No wonder the images captured my eye at every art show and auction.

It is where I’d skipped rocks, and splashed. Where I'd dipped more than my toes into the icy water on hot summer days. It is where my family went for picture-perfect picnics, and lazy day drives.

Cool mountain water trickles from glacial places until it ripples down the narrow creek bed before slipping seamlessly into Waterton Lakes. Pass Creek holds part of my heart. Happy memories often do. It is perfect.

So there I stood, in an art shop, crying over a photograph of rocks. Tranquility can be captured in a frame and hung as comforting waters on a wall.