10:13

With a high pitched grinding noise and and reverberating bang, Meredith shut the heavy sliding door to the old shed where the Cougar had been parked. The once proud silver paint of the leanto shaped building had flecked off the old wood and there was barely any trace of the red edging her father had so painstakingly added to all the out buildings in the yard. Stepping back she cast her eyes around the old place and realized it had been years since she had really looked at it. Run down and a shadow of its former proud self, she had really neglected the place.

“Time to do something about that I guess,” she mused, “time to get off my keester and see about more than a few things I guess.”

Meredith clasped her collar closed with her left hand, trying to keep out the evening’s chill and bent down to pick up the dinged up and battered old red jerry can. “Last bit of purple in the place. Better do something about that to if I mean to get back to business.” She walked across the gravelled section leaning off tot he left to balance the weight of the gas and tried to keep the old and from infusing her jeans with the smell of gasoline. “I guess I better break out the covies too. Probably need a new pair of rubbers, some good gloves and I might think about trading in the old Minnie for one those bobcat things. No sense wasting time and money on the old tractor when I haven’t got a single PTO implement left. A good bucket on a bobcat and it’ll be just fine for scraping the snow and mucking the pens.”

“Times are a changing and its time I was a changin too. The beaver’d like that.”

Meredith stopped to put the can down and stretched her back out. “Now why the hell did I say that? The beaver would like it. Huh.” She scooped the can up with a swing of her arms and let he momentum spin her around until she was pointed at the shed where the old orange Minneapolis had been parked for too many years. “But the old girl’s not done yet. We both have a bit of work to do before we can call it finished; and I think there’s no call to be trading her in. I can spare a few dollars for the bobcat and we will just her snug in the shed for a few more years. I’d like that; yes indeed I would.”

10:9

The beaver, it seems, has gone for good. Meredith glanced around the empty loft that, other than the stack of blankets and old tack by the window, was exactly as it was 6 months ago before the beaver had mystically appeared over by the coulee.

Winter and spring had come and gone and summer looked to be starting to fade. It seemed she was alone again. She was going to miss that cheeky little bugger; he had had this twinkle that had made her smile. Still made her smile when she thought about it. It had been a good summer; the best in a lot of years and for some reason it had been a healing one. A lot of the old fears and doubts somehow seemed a bit less jagged, still there, but less… obtrusive; like they’d been planed down to remove the splinters and rough edges but still left the grain and gouges to bravely pronounce their history, a visible reminder, but no longer marring the beauty they contributed to.

It had been a long time since I’ve felt this good, Meredith mused as she carefully walked down the steep stairs. I really ought to do something with it.

Outside the sun was low in the west and the sharp shadows animated the yard and buildings, staging a lovely pantomime across the empty space in front of her. She could see her father and mother coming back from the barn holding hands and swinging the galvanized bucket of fresh milk between them. From the gap between the shop and the chicken coop the old combine was trundling into the yard after a long day of ceaseless labour, signally another successful harvest and the hope of enough money to make it through the winter. Over by the old corral, the children climbed up the stack of bales, occasionally sending one tumbling down, much to the consternation of the hired hand by his shack who knew he would be the one to have to fix the stack in the morning.

In those dusky black shadows and rays of golden light, the old place was alive again, like it hadn’t been in decades. It’s funny, up until now I hadn’t much missed any of that. This old place had been her fortress of solitude for so long. Other than that brief and bitter interlude with… with Barney… I’ve been alone, and I thought I liked it that way. As a small cluster of clouds, high up in the western sky moved swiftly across the sun, the shadow play faded to black and was wiped clean, leaving a filmy gray curtain across the buildings and old motionless equipment that moments ago had been alive in her imagination.

Meredith, leaned back against the faded old wood of the shop’s doorframe staring blankly at the yard. Her mind drifted until, a few moments later, she watched as the sun reappeared, lighting up the canvas, bring the actors back to the stage but somehow, subtly, resetting the scene.

It iss time for a new scene, Meredith thought to herself. It’s time for a little forward momentum in my life.

10:2

Meredith watch the dust slowly drift off the road and obscure the slowly settling sun. The bright yellows briefly twisted into burnt oranges and deep golden hues as that ephemeral veil of tiny rock and soil swirled through the air, creating a momentary diversion of the sunset’s stately progress and marking the passage of something more than just another car.

A passing. That’s what it was. Another moment gone and forever out of reach. Such moments should always be cherished, no matter how awkward or painful they might be. We all to often closed ourselves off from those moments that defined us, pretending instead to be a creation of luck or karma or influenced by some greater power. But what makes who we are is always in front of us, swirling around us in our own personal cyclone of thoughts, memories and images of the past. And so we try to forget.

But Meredith wasn’t going to forget. A change was upon her and it would still be there in front of her long after the fragments of earth settled to the ground and the light reemerged. Darkness was coming, as it always did after the light was done, but Meredith had no intention of closing her eyes and sleeping through its ascendancy.

She stepped off the porch and walked towards the barn. First steps were always important and she’d made plenty of them in her life. She’d not always gotten it right but she had always done it anyway. Change was upon her and with her eyes bright, head high and the spring still in her step, she was going to take these moments and add them to the canvas of her life; bright strokes of immutable gouache to catch and tease the eye and lead the observer to new and ever-changing movements and structures.

Meredith paused in the middle of the farm yard and breathed in the cooling night air; she watched the suns rays emerge from the the cloud and then slowly transform to the fading, heavy tones that would merge into the dark and heavy earth, signalling the coming of night. Change was hard, yes, but it was new, restorative and would always make the morning something to look forward to.

She stood there for a long time before finally walking on to the barn and the chores that patiently awaited her.

6:28

A dark and moonless night, far from the highways and towns with their hustle and bustle, spreading their noise and light pollution regardless of time of day, month or season. The stars glittered across the sky like a smear of opal dust. They lay on the velvet background of the night sky: a cloudy brush stroke that cast no light of its own, existing only as a background to the fears and worries of a day now gone.

No shadows, no shapes, just a smothering, omnipresent darkness casting its claim of silence and engulfing the present, seemingly blocking out time and hope and all thoughts of the future.

But the past, ah, the past, it leaked through, didn’t it? Under the folded edges of the darkness, through the weave of the night’s fabric, from the very air itself, the past and its pain, regrets and unbearable finality crept into this close and empty void. And there seemed to be no escape, no way to turn aside the tide. For it came not in waves but as a mist. It was not there to grasp or confront but still moved through, over and around everything that made up the moment she now confronted.

The moment she did not want nor had ever cared to see. That moment had arrived with the darkness, and she was powerless to push it back. This was not a Pandora’s box to wail and scream over with regret and cries of denial. There was no lid to slam shut, no box to hurl and smash against a royal wall. There was no symbol of failure or self-inflicted misery to rail against. There was just Meredith, alone with Meredith. And with nothing and no one by her side. And with no excuses left.

 

6:26

Meredith elbowed her eBay through the screen door and placed the remnants of her dinner on the counter. She had been sitting on the veranda for hours but it hadn’t really had any effect on her mood.

But then she really hadn’t expected it too. Odd. She really hadn’t felt this way since that incident with Barney but of course, it was just a continuation of that sordid event wasn’t it.

The antique dining room table was just as she’d left it. The dark wood inlayed with elegant traceries and polished to mirror finish contrasted with the dilapidated cardboard box and and it’s even more disreputable contents. It had been 2 days since shed deposited it there and 12 hours since she had mustered up the courage to open it and flip through it’s contents. The unwanted feelings that were engendered by the simple fact of its existence still ebbed and flowed through her psyche like the turbulence at the base of a giant cracked dam and she feared the dam could not hold much longer.

She knew it was time to give in, open the floodgates, and hope and pray that after the pain and destruction, the waters would once again run clear and clean. And that would be worth it. Years of aching and doubt washed away in one cleansing wave, with the flood waters bring renewal and new life. She knew it was time and yet the godfather of all emotions held her back from hope or succor.

Meredith was still afraid. After all these years and all that unending struggle to stay sane, to retain her pride, and to prove to herself she had not been broken, Meredith was afraid.

And yet the box remained on her elegant dining room table, destroying any hope that she could recede once more into the depths. The box, and it’s contents demanded she face that fear because there was no longer any escape, no longer anyplace to hide.

The beaver had seen to that.

6:25

The sun set slowly over the hillside, casting its dying light against the clouds and bringing their chameleon-like shapes into relief, changing over and over the colours and tones of the evening sky.

The rains had gone and there was now a little warmth in the air, soon all that would remain of the dying summer sun. From the coulee the evening song of the frogs and crickets slowly replaced the happy chattering of sparrows and chickadees. It was unusually humid, and moisture hung in the air, making it as close to muggy as it ever got on the desert-like prairie.

High in the sky an angled line of geese slowly descended over the horizon returning to the lake after a day of feeding. It was early for them to be making their way back south, but the goslings were all grown up and perhaps it was a sign that these summer days were also slowly setting. A last forlorn chorus of honking and the geese were gone, leaving nothing and no one to share the moment.

And ever more quickly the waves of light faded, rippling out against the clouds, winking in and out, in and out and then fading to nothingness; one by one, slowly leaving nothing but darkness in their wake.

And at last the light was gone. The clouds spread across the sky to brush out the light of the stars. And the prairie was quiet, dark and a most suitable canvas for the feelings of loneliness and quiet fear that were all that remained of a long and unmourned day.