The bones pull us up and over the mountains.  Years of collection are entombed and displayed under dim lights in the cool expanse of the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology.  But it is the layers of sediments exposed in the surrounding hillsides that draw my attention most.  In the heat of the day while everyone else is still safely ensconced within the museum, I stand outside, reading the colours, learning how strong sunlight saps the intensity of the merlots and rusts.  Three days east of the mountains teaches me about prairie light on haystacks and shadows pooling in coulees.  We leave too soon for me to tire of the gentle contours, the push and pull of sediments resisting the erosion of time.