After a couple of years in Asia, it's been nice to be home in the wide open spaces of Saskatchewan. My heart is full of love for my homeland (even though a big part of me would love to hiking around some mountains) and this sentiment has determined which books I've been reading. Currently, I'm rereading Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow. Stegner lived a few years of his life in my home area, summers on their homestead on the US border and winters in the town of Eastend (a town north of Frontier). I want to share with you his words on the Prairies . . .
Desolate? Forbidding? There was never a country that in its good moments was more beautiful. Even in drouth or dust storm or blizzard it is the reverse of monotonous, once you have submitted to it with all the senses. You don't get out of the wind, but learn to lean and squint against it. You don't escape sky and sun, but wear them in your eyeballs and on your back. You become acutely aware of yourself. The world is very large, the sky even larger, and you are very small. But also the world is flat, empty, nearly abstract, and in its flatness you are a challenging upright thing, as sudden as an exclamation mark, as enigmatic as a question mark.
It is a country to breed mystical people, egocentric people, perhaps poetic people. But not humble ones. At noon the total sun pours on your single head; at sunrise or sunset you throw a shadow a hundred yards long. It was not prairie dwellers who invented the indifferent universe or impotent man. Puny you may feel there, and vulnerable, but not unnoticed. This is a land to mark the sparrow's fall.
Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow, New York: Penguin Books, 8.
I think that any prairie dwellers out there would understand what he means.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Captivated by Magic
The Sunday before last, I awoke in a new world, a winter wonderland with magic dancing from the sky. Even though we dismiss it as a burden which we must shovel and plow, snow is magic. It covers over everything, hiding the bareness brownness of winter grass and icing the branches of the leafless trees. The sun glistens with increasing intensity as it reflects from the snowy banks. I shield my eyes and try to take it all in.
When I got home from church, I dug my snow boots out of the closet. They are not just your run of the mill winter boots. These are Sorels which almost every Prairie child had in the early 90s. Mine are a bright shade of purple with green and pink accents. Very stylish (well, in the last decade) and still, the warmest boots I’ve ever owned. I tied the laces, called my dog Radar, and ventured into the snow.
I ran. I ran through banks and drifts that on a few occasions neared my knees in height. Usually the snow only came half way up my shin, but I remember my childhood days when, encumbered in my boots, snow pants, jacket, scarf, large mitts, and toque, I would hardly be able to move in this much snow. I remembered the annoyance of socks which fall down inside one’s boots as I felt mine slip down and settle somewhere near my toes. But I didn’t care. We were playing in the snow, the magic snow, the snow that many Africans and Asians can only dream of, as if it were some unattainable fairy tale or a legend that grandparents tell.
Radar is a snow dog. He rolled in the powder and then ran with his nose down, smelling and tasting the snow. Then he looked up at me with his smile and a pile of snow on his nose and his eyes seemed to say, I’m so glad you’re here with me. I kicked some snow at him and he bit at the flakes in the air. Then I walked with my toes pointed out and mimic tractor tracks as Radar ran circles around me.
Even though my cheeks were getting the tingling cold feeling, I took a few minutes to think, standing in the middle of my farmyard with snow falling and falling and falling. I thought about how my sins are whiter than snow. But echoing in my head was Revelation: Behold, I make all things new. As I looked at the world around me, indeed, everything felt new.
New. I have new plans now. Okay, they’re not new, but I’ve finally decided to act on them and see what happens. I applied to graduate school for the fall semester. The sense of direction and calling is welcome, but a fear lingers about how it will all work out. I have a strong sense that I should be returning to studies. The other day when I was cleaning my room, I found three new packs of looseleaf. I guess I should use them up. So perhaps next winter I will not be dancing in the snow banks of Saskatchewan, but fighting depression because of the rain in Vancouver’s sun starved winters.
In the meantime, I may remain in my home town, perhaps return to a former summer job in the manufacturing plant. I always looked good with a blue collar. These could be my final Frontier days . . .
Um, I think I’ve said that before. I'll leave the future to God, and enjoy the last moments of snow as it melts away into spring.
When I got home from church, I dug my snow boots out of the closet. They are not just your run of the mill winter boots. These are Sorels which almost every Prairie child had in the early 90s. Mine are a bright shade of purple with green and pink accents. Very stylish (well, in the last decade) and still, the warmest boots I’ve ever owned. I tied the laces, called my dog Radar, and ventured into the snow.
I ran. I ran through banks and drifts that on a few occasions neared my knees in height. Usually the snow only came half way up my shin, but I remember my childhood days when, encumbered in my boots, snow pants, jacket, scarf, large mitts, and toque, I would hardly be able to move in this much snow. I remembered the annoyance of socks which fall down inside one’s boots as I felt mine slip down and settle somewhere near my toes. But I didn’t care. We were playing in the snow, the magic snow, the snow that many Africans and Asians can only dream of, as if it were some unattainable fairy tale or a legend that grandparents tell.
Radar is a snow dog. He rolled in the powder and then ran with his nose down, smelling and tasting the snow. Then he looked up at me with his smile and a pile of snow on his nose and his eyes seemed to say, I’m so glad you’re here with me. I kicked some snow at him and he bit at the flakes in the air. Then I walked with my toes pointed out and mimic tractor tracks as Radar ran circles around me.
Even though my cheeks were getting the tingling cold feeling, I took a few minutes to think, standing in the middle of my farmyard with snow falling and falling and falling. I thought about how my sins are whiter than snow. But echoing in my head was Revelation: Behold, I make all things new. As I looked at the world around me, indeed, everything felt new.
New. I have new plans now. Okay, they’re not new, but I’ve finally decided to act on them and see what happens. I applied to graduate school for the fall semester. The sense of direction and calling is welcome, but a fear lingers about how it will all work out. I have a strong sense that I should be returning to studies. The other day when I was cleaning my room, I found three new packs of looseleaf. I guess I should use them up. So perhaps next winter I will not be dancing in the snow banks of Saskatchewan, but fighting depression because of the rain in Vancouver’s sun starved winters.
In the meantime, I may remain in my home town, perhaps return to a former summer job in the manufacturing plant. I always looked good with a blue collar. These could be my final Frontier days . . .
Um, I think I’ve said that before. I'll leave the future to God, and enjoy the last moments of snow as it melts away into spring.
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