A Sense of Place

Retirement has given me opportunity to reminisce about all the places that have held great meaning to me over the past decades. How have they each shaped my present home? Can any of these qualities be seen already, just buried in my past work life. My childhood homes, both in a small prairie town in winter and on a small family grain farm five miles east of town, has set the bar, I think, fairly high for this greatest of meaning. Sense of place as diverse as the plains of the Panhandle of West Texas to the furthest western province of Canada where I now live has come with me in my travels. Admittedly, British Columbia skies are cropped by trees and mountains but farther north of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the trees do occasionally part to allow the sky some breathing room. I also lived in Kelowna, B.C. where the wide valley also opened itself to the sky. The water features of the Island and the Okanagan are not reflections of the dry prairies, but do reflect the sky. Any similarities to the flat southern Saskatchewan landscape are dear to me. Some memories do distance themselves, while more recent memories can be in a somewhat dreamlike state. In that dream state, I am still wandering down a dirt road, barefoot to feel the land. It always has been about the land, family and all things growing. Musing a bit further, the following paragraphs describe what may be seen in any rural landscape and my image of my sense of place on the prairies.

Barns and greenhouses, landscapes and the great blue sky. Rambling old farmhouses with verandahs. Green growing wheat, blue fields of flax or heather in bloom backed up by yellow mustard blossoms or sunflowers stretch wide over prairies, nestle against foothills, or sketch themselves into the rocky mountains. Places where there is space. Broad, open and free space or sheltered space enough to sprout and grow. Quiet, where even another’s breath can not be heard. Only the wind in the trees, a tractor remote and grumbling, meadowlarks and killdeers, eagles and crows, gulls and ravens. Those are all of my dearest times. 

There was the time before adolescence had blossomed and yet was on the unknown verge of that riotous growth. The prairies were flat, and I assume still are. Flat as this page upon which I write. If one could put one’s ear to the ground as if listening for the distant rumble of horses or a buffalo herd, and yet look along the flat curve of the earth, the textures of the growing wheat or rye would leap out in greens and golds, brown and black. Bright tiny flowers nestled in amongst the grasses or waving and nodding above. Tree roots and the bumps of roads, wrinkled the flat land. Above, a blue, blue dome of sky seen riding high. Maybe a skiff of cloud. The dry dust of shimmering air settling with the end of day as the sun settled on the horizon. Distant storm clouds, ruffling the thin edged horizon, shaded in pinks and oranges by the brilliance of the setting sun. This textured flatness blackens with the loss of the sun’s rays becoming sharp shadows by the silvery gloss of a full moon on the prairies.

“Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you 

had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.”

~ Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care