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Forbidden Zone "All the earth colours of the painter's
palette are out there in the many miles of badlands. The light
Naples yellow through ochres - orange and red and purple earth
- even the soft earth greens." A clanging triangle signalled the announcement of a pancake breakfast. We had lucked out and landed in the park on Parks Day. Every activity was free, beginning with hotcakes. "Hey, this is where I could shine," I said, joining the burgeoning line-up. "I wonder how many pancakes I can eat?" Too bad it wasn't a pancake eating contest. While we waited for hot-off-the-griddle flapjacks, staff encouraged us to enter a draw for free T-shirts. Why not? I figured. I'm out of clean clothes. We dropped our completed forms into a draw box along with hundreds of others. A park staff drew out a name: "Sharon Anderson." "All right!" Sharon yelled, jumping up to collect her sparkling new and clean Celebrate Parks Day T-shirt. When Sharon claimed her prize, I noticed they didn't ask her for identification - or even a ticket stub. Hmmm, I thought, when they draw another name I'll jump up and shout 'All right!' I could really use some clean clothes. After breakfast, we grabbed our water bottles - the temperature already crispy, well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade - and gamboled off on a self-guided hike. After some distance, we stumbled across a sign that warned: You are entering the Forbidden Zone. The terrain was dry and barren, save for a couple of scattered cacti and sagebrush, and a few dinky patches of tawny yellowed grass tufts. The whole area resembled a moonscape - so stark and devoid of colour that it looked like dusty lunar craters rather than somewhere in southern Alberta. We gained a vantage point, and gazed down at the Red Deer river. A protected species of cottonwood grew along the bank; sharp green leaves contrasted with the drab hard-baked earth browns and mottled yellows surrounding us. Two hours before noon and the temperature had reached meltdown. Poor Michael Jackson would have been reduced to nothing more than a steaming pile of mutagenic beige poop. Relentless bugs. Searing sun. The main inhabitants were snakes and bloodsucking insects. "Hmmm," I mumbled, squashing a pesky blackfly and shaking a drop of perspiration dangling from my nose. "No wonder old-timers called this the 'Bad Lands.' If the heat didn't get you the mozzies and blackflies did." We managed to elude the Forbidden Zone, and sought relief from the all-that-is-solid-melts-into-thin-air temperatures by joining an air-conditioned lab tour. Over 40 dinosaur species, some dating back 75 million years (as of Wednesday), have been unearthed in the area. Resting on a heavy-duty work bench beneath bright lamps and industrial-strength vacuum hoses was a Centrosaurus skull, 36 inches in length. (One of the most impressive bone-beds in the park is the Centrosaurus area. About the size of a football field, it contains approximately 20 to 60 bones per metre.) "Before the 'well-horned lizard' can be exhibited," a paleontologist was explaining, "a year's worth of meticulous work needs to be completed. We chisel away any dirt and debris using a common dental pick and Pharmasave toothbrush." Sharon whispered, "Sounds about as much fun as washing the Empire State building windows." "Yeah," I grimaced. "With your tongue." We left the dusty extinct beasts and joined a lecture on wriggling, live snakes. Luckily, we arrived late and had to sit in the back. "Snakes are amazing creatures," a handler was saying. "How many times have you eaten today?" she asked. I began a quick tally. Before I had finished, she continued, "We have a snake in our zoo that hasn't eaten for two years!" Sharon saw fit to joke about it. "Wasn't that right around the time that new zookeeper went missing?" The lecture concluded with a draw for free T-shirts. Sue and I both won. Purely coincidental, of course. Donning our new garb, we hopped on our bikes and pedalled a gravel loop through excavation sites. Sticks and string marked out various digs for examination. Glass enclosures covered some, keeping the site preserved as it was originally found with dinosaur bones sticking forth from the earth. A gentle breeze fanned our cheeks. The setting sun traversed chocolate hills, striking hoodoos and casting shadows of bygone Tyrannosaurus. |
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