Over the wild blue once again

We returned from a quick trip to Vancouver last week, with the good fortune to see the clouds clear as we drew near our northerly home, presenting us a wonderful view of those impossible mountains. Low cloud lay flat in the valleys, leaving the peaks to poke through a smooth expanse of thick vapor like islands on a soft gray sea.  Mist snaked along valleys filling them with the ghost of glaciers centuries past.  Fresh snow has covered the icefields again for the coming season; I enjoy flying earlier in September or October during that very brief window when they're exposed, revealing scoured rock valleys and long arms of ancient ice clad in wrinkled, gray elephant skin.