The Surprise of Tomorrow

Van Gogh
The Immersive Experience in Regina 2023

Maps are drawings, 

 sketches that show the way 

  around the corner, 

   out of the city, 

     over the prairies 

    to the mountains and 

into the surprise of tomorrow 

 as each step and minute

  passes under our feet.

“I learned what every dreaming child needs to know, 

that no horizon is so far you cannot get above it or beyond it.”

~ Beryl Markham, author

(1902 ~ 1986)

Denial

Wind swirled viciously,

threw freezing splats of rain

ice-cold from sea or mountain.

Cherry blossoms torn 

from thinning branches

flew helter-skelter

to puddled asphalt

denying spring her crown.

“A great wind is blowing, and that gives 

you either imagination or a headache.”

~ Catherine the Great

A Turning

Over the vast prairies

Sunshine lights up the land

I turn my face up to its grace.

Over granite mountains

Sunshine sketches sharp relief

I turn my face toward its artistry

Over sparking waters

Sunshine outlines each wave

I turn my face toward its brilliance.

Over land, mountain or waters

Sunshine, always a welcome blessing,

brings warmth to my heart and my soul.

“Ô, sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”

~ Roman Payne

The Mountains of Vancouver

Snow-capped mountains,

aglow in the morning sun,

narrowly pose for

neighbourhood walkers, 

peaking from behind 

roof tops, trees and power poles.

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains.”

~ John Muir,  The Mountains of California

Quilted

February, 2017 but the same as today! Maybe not the ducks.

Stitched in green and black,

reds and gold,

nestled in shades of grey sky and ice mushed asphalt

Jack Frost spread his own

icy quilt over the west coast.

Decorated with snowcapped mountains, 

homes, high-rises and charmingly cold pillows 

fashioned from shrubbery and fence posts,

he breathed a chilling fog and cheered!

“Take a good look at your fabric and intuit what it is saying to you.”

~ Patricia Belyea, East-Meets-West Quilts

Mountains to Prairies

Sunday, December 22:  I haven’t been on a road trip for a long time. It started out in the dark. Only Vancouver’s street lights lighting the beginning of the trip. Traffic is light at 5 a.m. in the city and especially outside of the city. Most people are still asleep or just getting started. For the first couple of hours it was just quiet and dark. Quiet except for Stuart McLean telling us Christmas stories. There were three of us in the truck. A truck was packed tight for to be a long trip. I was one of the passengers. After the weather warnings, road closures and heavy snows of Friday and Saturday the morning was still and quiet. The sun not yet up so the level of cloud was uncertain. The most traffic we encountered was a semitrailer or two. Trying to get photos of the amazing snow covered trees was almost impossible. Once over the summit, coming down into the valleys toward Kamloops the sky began to lighten showing us the textures of hills and trees and layered with snow.

All the cautions we entertained and received to wait out the weather became very real. As we entered Jasper National Park, we were advised of a very tragic and horrendous traffic accident occurred several kilometres ahead, stopping traffic. Hundreds of us were stopped with several of us getting out of our vehicles. A thin layer of ice covered the highway. Brief chats ensued about what may have happened and how long we’d be stopped. Several travellers farther up the line of cars, ultimately turned their cars around to retrace some of their miles. After about 3 hours, traffic started to move slowly forward with other brief stops as vehicles from the other direction were let through. As we passed the scene of the accident, the devastation was brought into stark relief. Saddened by this accidental tragedy, we were also grateful for heeding all cautions, safety preparations and, ultimately, our own safety.

Christmas for some will never, ever be the same. The danger of the heavy snows is far too easily dismissed on our highways. The beauty of the mountains and snow covered trees surrounded us distracting us with its magnificence. 

Monday, December 23:  Last evening I visited with my sister Kate in St. Albert and at this writing, arriving in darkness, my son and I are in Regina for our much anticipated Christmas visits with family and friends. 

“I may not have gone where I intended to go but 

I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”

~ Douglas Adams

On the Island

The south east wind blows cold, flattening long grasses

til their heads bow low

obedient to the whim of this bossy wind.

Brown eyed Susans stand bright and tall, cheerily defiant in these late summer days.

Tree branches wave and bob restlessly in jazz time and tune to this gutsy weather.

Fat rain drops, refrigerated by snowy mountain tops,

are flung helter-skelter onto patient Mother Earth,

into gullied curbs, container gardens and questionably brave umbrellas.

Fall edges closer but is still days away.

Today already feels as though this hilarious

west coast winter is impatient to race in and take over.

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”

~ Mark Twain

One Sided

One Sided

“Rates of speed on this highway are pathetic!! Who sets them

anyway!? And the drivers! People that always trundle along at exactly….I mean exactly…..the speed limit. Not a kilometre over or under but exactly!!! I was speeding along, with that great Billy Idol driving song Blue Highway turned up full blast…..it was awesome. Turned around a bend in the highway and there it was. A poky little old station wagon that must have been 50 years old. And this driver!! She could barely see over the steering wheel! She had a nerve being on the road. A typical Speed Limit Nerd. I couldn’t pass because we were coming up to another turn on this amazing mountain road and I couldn’t see if I’d hit a semi or a deer or anything else! And then there’s the ghastly forest fires…..yah I know they were miles away but there was a lot of smoke! I wanted to get the hell out of there! So I had to slow waaaaay down to match this crazy woman's ridiculous speed……Road rage? What? You think even this sounds like road rage? The air was as blue as her blue hair!! I mean really….what if I had to get to a hospital? Or what if you had just texted me that my house was burning down!?……....................................Roxanne just hung up on me!! What did I say?”

“Smile, breathe and go slowly”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Metaphorizing

Mountains and molehills, 

intricate creations of Mother Earth ~ guides for committing to progress.

Grand snow capped mountains rise high into the sky. 

On the horizon ~ a textured screening for rise or set of the sun, rays filtering through the peaks, valleys and forests. 

Humble molehills left behind by earth-dwelling moles are at our feet ~ mounds of earth from digging deep tunnels while eating insects and grubs, damaging our perfect lawns and gardens with their burrowing.

For my eyes to see possibility and grandeur

on a horizon at the end of a chosen path

fills me with dreams and hope for more adventure

For my feet to stumble on a humble molehill,

if only gazing dreamily at the grand mountains

I may just be brought suddenly down to earth!

“Men trip not on mountains, they trip on molehills.”

~ Chinese Proverb

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

Beautiful Spillage

Early morning

when energy rises

like the sun slowly

spilling golden pink rays

nourishing the sleeping land with lightening sky,

back-lighting snow capped mountains

spreading magic over quilted prairies

be-jeweling lake countries

awakening treelined streets ~

homes just stirring inside all that silence 

stirring into daylight with restless calm.

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

~ Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through it and Other Stories

On a Mountain Top

I stood at the top of a mountain looking over a land that I loved. ~ In sadness I saw the horizon was still shrouded in fog and in cloud.

I turned away from the scene in the distance ~ in surprise a whole range mountains surround for accompaniment on a journey I thought lost. 

With a great sigh of relief and acceptance, 

many nursing explorers and builders stood firm

involved in their own march with their standards

I stood at the top of a mountain

looked over all of the land that I loved

always standing still slowly to learn.

“Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of mankind.”

~ Ron L. Hubbard

A Mountain to Climb

From Moss Rock, Victoria - today's climb!

A Mountain to Climb 

We had been climbing all day. A few rest breaks to take in the vast forests, ribbons of rivers flowing to the sea and in the distance a small town. Doll houses. Lined up in squares, nestled in arcs and circles. Threaded through with greenery, trunks of trees invisible from the heights. Highways, like thin pencil marks, dotted with cars like tiny scurrying ants. Once climbing again, our eyes fixed on the next granite handhold, our goal was the mountain top. 

Understand. I’m a prairie girl. If anyone had told me when I walked on the flat dirt roads of Saskatchewan that I would be scaling a mountain with a climbing group……….well, I would have doubled over laughing. Life does send one down strange roads, or should I say climbing up challenging mountains. I had moved to the mountains as a young wandering twenty something. I was only going away for a year. That’s what I told my family and friends. The mountains and valleys held me always for one more day and one more month until 15 years had passed.

I started joining groups just because I was homesick for my friends. None of the groups really fit me - or should I say I didn’t fit in any of them. Except for the hiking and climbing group. The flat prairies had never offered me the perspective that the mountains did. Climbing with a group of friends was really something hard to describe. Although each of us focussed on the granite in front of us, we were together. We always knew where each other were, if there were problems, calling encouragement to each other. The first one to the top of the mountain found a place for our lunch, or if it was an overnight, where we would be camping. The relationship between us was something I had never felt before.

Half way up the mountain, we felt the cold that signalled a storm. Weather reports had talked about a possible storm, but it was supposed to have gone the other direction. We reached the mountain top just as  the storm broke. Our leader had arrived first and had one shelter erected. Cold and shivering, we all crowded into one tent, pulled out our snacks and water and settled in for the night. Then it started. One little snicker from one of us - no names! Before long, just when the thunder cracked, we were all leaning against each other laughing at nothing. We were safe, and warm and dry - and very happy.

“Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except 

by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.”

~ Albert Einstein

Author's note: A very tongue in cheek memory that is only partially true. Climbing Moss Rock didn't require an overnight camp ~ we were still in the Victoria. To this prairie girl, it felt like a mountain but really one a big rock.            February 15, 2024

Passive Resistance

Words swirl around in my mind

just out of reach of my fingertips 

so I look at the sky and 

wonder how many shades of blue

horizon to horizon dome our world

gilt edged wings fly gulls into the azure space

in the peace of morning quiet by the ocean

while the muse plays a game of hide and seek

I sit quietly and watch the sky, mountains and shore

feel the warmth of the sun on my toes

breathe in air freshened from the night

listen to distant rumble of early traffic

letting the muse play 

while I soak in the morning  ~

A kindness to the muse and this writer.

“Being gentle doesn’t stop us fighting for our dreams.”

~ Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling - Fennel’s Journal - No.6