10:10
10:10
Where the mountains meet the prairie, the long undulating band of hills, trees and grassland mix together to for the foothills. They aren’t very wide, almost indiscernible if compared to the vast waving seas of the dry and golden prairie or the massive jumble of rock and ice that typifies the Rocky Mountains. But this tiny belt that serves as a transition from earth to sky is one of the most truly beautiful places on this planet. Teaming with wildlife, full of raging rivers and placid ponds, a glorious treat to behold in all of nature’s seasons, the all too brief transit of the foothills is often overlooked. But to those who pause in their journey and take in the air both warmed by the prairie sun and cooled by the mountains’ shadows, the reward is a sight that will live on in your dreams and memories for many years to come.
10:9
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.
10:8
10:8
It was $4.95 for the bottle of water. One stinking bottle of water that should have been free for the asking but this hole of gas station was asking for five fucking bucks.
This was a sign of the times. Everyone was getting greedy and the bastards in their ivory towers were putting the squeeze on. He’d run into a place last spring in Calgary that was trying to get away with charging $3 for a lousy cup of coffee. Just because it was ‘fresh-brewed’, whatever the fuck that meant. And now he was stuck shelling out cash for fucking water. Nothing from a tap because the bastard owners were too fucking lazy to clean the fucking bathrooms. Fucking pig sties. Actually I wouldn’t let a fucking pig in there, probably die of fucking gonorrhoea five seconds after it walked in the fucking door.
And one more smirk out of that ignoramus prick at the counter and I would have introduced him to my fucking tire iron. Fuck him and his “that’s the price on the bottle dude…”
Jesus, why the hell did I stop. 80 fucking degrees in a fucking desert and no one but morons and inbred asswipes around. I should just get the…
That fucking bitch. That stupid, conniving, ball shrinking whore. This is all her fucking fault. I don’t care what she thinks she has on me, I’m going to drive this fucking car right down her goddamn throat until she shits out what she fucking owes me… I’m going drive this piece of shit through her motherfucking living room and then burn down her pissant little fucking country hovel around her…
It’s my fucking property. She has no right to keep me from it and I’m gonna fucking just…
Fuck.
Fucking…
Fuck.
Barney slammed the empty bottle on to the oil-soaked concrete pad and watched it skitter under the car. He opened the car door and slid down into the Cougar’s sticky vinyl seat still wet from a day’s worth of sweat streaming down his back. A moment of staring blankly at the dust covered gauges and he twisted the ignition violently, slammed the Hurst shifter into gear and jammed the gas pedal down.
I gotta hit Estevan before the border closes. Fucking bitch.
10:7
10:7
As the accumulation of emptiness threatens to smother all lingering spirit or hope, ahead a washed out green sign slowly thrusts upwards out of the unbroken horizon: Tompkins 15 km, No Services. This first, illusive sign of life often brings the traveller back to himself, more strikingly so in the dry stifling heat of a prairie Indian summer. Miles of sticky traveling and whistling wind have lulled you into believing that this desolation had no beginning and would have no end; this first sign marring hypnotic surface of the void, introduces that first delicate crack, that within a few scant miles, will open up like a portal out of this empty, lonely land.
It is here, at this first sign of hope and this first reminder of what you left behind that the epiphany can often be found. That moment of clarity and confluence of unrealized realities that clears away the concealing grime and lets a sort of truth shine through.
It was here that Barney remembered the box. He knew he had fled. He knew his retreat had necessitated abandoning his goals and uncharacteristically leaving behind a piece of his reality, his precious truth, with that crone. And now he remembered that he had left even more behind; he had left behind his words, his history, the records of all that was his now lay in a dank corner in an architectural monstrosity in a nothing town in reach of each and every one of the pathetic and insignificant occupants. It was here, as the desiccated landscape first began to give way to thoughts of renewed life, that Barney recognized the enormity of his defeat at the withered hands of that shrivelled old bitch.
10:6
10:6
Just east of Medicine Hat the land flattens out. For a few hundred miles across the southern Alberta landscape, there had been nothing but slowly rolling prairie devoid of anything but chugging pumpjacks, abandoned farmsteads and giant metal microwave towers that thrust up above the horizon and marked off the lengths of constantly retreating horizon like giant milestones. But after climbing out of that last deep valley that marks the last of the mountains’ fluvial bounty as the watercourses all turn north towards far off Hudson’s Bay and then leaving the wishful metropolis of a small prairie city behind, the land starts to feel like it’s had every last feature scoured away. The hills disappear, the signs of human habitation fade and the vista soon becomes nothing but miles and miles of flat, grass covered sea.
In this absolute emptiness even the grass remains short and sparse and, son after crossing over the Saskatchewan border, even it begins to give way to dried out nothingness. The unsuspecting traveler often opens his eyes and finds himself transported to far off Sahara, watching the whistling winds shape dunes of drifting sand, trying to build up or dig dig down, trying and failing to add some sort of texture or dimension to this arid and bleak landscape.
The pervasive howling wind constantly buffets vehicles side to side, constantly reminding the itinerant traveller that it reigns supreme in this wild and empty place. Gone are the doubled lanes, and all hint of fellow sojourners; it is as if the land itself has deliberately separated all the wayfarers, leaving them to transit the uninterrupted space with only their own fears and doubts to accompany them.
The ash grey ribbon of road flows straight and unswervingly between the sentinel towers — the sole indications that that man has passed this away before and has somehow marked the passage — with no towns nor crossroads to break up it’s progress. By now even the ubiquitous fences have disappeared as if the inhabitants had long ago given up hope of ever containing or even cataloguing this vast expanse of nihility.
It is a prospect that seems designed by the gods themselves to empty the mind and drain the soul.
10:5
10:5
Waiting is a peculiarly unique experience. It is something we all do, starting from the moment we are born hung and cold and demanding succour until we we end our lives lying on a bed somewhere mulling over the unavoidable cessation of everything we know and understand. And we never do it well.
One would think after the inevitable practice at waiting that every living thing is forced to endure that it would become second nature to us. Many animal species see to have mastered the art, lying still and focused for hours on end in order to catch the elusive prey or perhaps huddled equally motionless to avoid that equally patient predator.
But it seems that unless one dedicates oneself to gaining hard won success at mystical practices or is trained, mentally and physically to reach that state of single-mindedness that thinking beings are generally unable to endure waiting with any kind of sang froid or avoid escalations of fear, anxiety, excitement or any of a number of equally adrenaline producing emotions. It is as if our brains fear us turning our backs on thinking and active participation in favour of just experiencing and enduring, somehow transporting us back hundred of thousands of years of evolution and becoming once again some sort or primordial glop. Not to say that some supposedly thinning creatures haven’t done jet the that, or at least the equivalent—I have definitely endure the company of more that a few—but overall thought seems to triumph over sedentarialism and, I believe whole heartedly, that is a direct result of the intercession of the ancient hind brain’s fear of reversion.
Be that all as it may, waiting is not a naturally satisfying state for most and a particularly discommodious one for we elect few who are creatures of action. And perversely—as the unites oh so often is— we few are the ones who so often needs must wait if success is to be attained.
Still, I hate waiting. And now I’m cold.
10:4
10:4
The weather was slowly turning. It wasn’t cold, but the heat was slowly seeping out of the ground, leaving an all but undetectable chill. The days were now marked not only by the passage of the sun across the sky but by the flow of warmth that invaded the air in the mornings but drifted off as evening approached.
The shorter days masked this desertion of summer’s ardor so many people went about their daily lives, not realizing that fall was upon them. But if one stood quietly, and experienced the day as it tumbled past, the sharp cycles of autumnal fluctuations were obvious and more than a little discomforting.
Edward thought it was a bit to cold for standing around waiting. But unfortunately that’s what the situation called for.
10:3
10:3
God I hate that bitch.
The steady purr of the 351 started to roar as the speedometer climbed past 80 miles an hour. The southern Alberta highways were straight and empty and Barney took his rage out on the road, chewing up the asphalt and watching the miles disappear like the crisp, biting light of the sunset behind him.
He had the car, but little else and it was all that bitch’s fault. And she… what she had was worth more than the cash he was now mourning. She had a piece of the puzzle, a piece he could never recover short of murdering the interfering shrew and he had sworn that was the one thing he would never again turn his hand to. But the temptation…
He wrestled the iron monster into a sharp corner posted with ridiculous limits; a squeeze of the brake, a pause and then he floored it coming out of the apex, crossing momentarily into the other lane. That’s how you do it, not by slowing down, but by muscling through. That’s how you survived, how you prospered. Fucking sheep are always slowing down, obeying the law and getting in my way. Let them speed, let them roar down the road at whatever pathetic pace their tiny ego’s allow them; he would still crush them in the corners and leave them broken in the dust.
Barney notched the radio up again and grinned fiercely; broken in the dust he mused. He did not, however, look back to see if there was any truth to that assertion on this particular day.
10:2
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.
10:1
10:1
Woohoo birds
Flocks and herds
Define a shape
And then escape
Across the sky
This shape would fly
Change its aspects
As a new leader accepts
I wish my group,
Could choose to swoop
My clan, my peeps, my crowd
Together could be half as proud
As that soaring mass of fowl
Would we scream, or could we howl
At that open cyan sky
As they open their throats and together cry
Hurray and Woohoo
Together we do
Great things of great beauty
Feel joy is our duty
Though not among those far-off clouds
I was and am so very proud
Of the us all so together
My birds and friends of a feather