Time for some down time down in Saskatchewan Canada, the land of my birth and upbringing. I”d been gone a spell and knew for some time it was high time to reconnect with family and friends and yes, i do have a few of both.
I like the one about the guy driving across the prairie with a blind man in the passenger compartment. He asks, “I don’t see so well, what is saskatchewan like?” And the driver, possessed of a cutting wit replies, ” Put your hand on the dash… now, leave it there for three days.”
Now, I don’t really go along with that so much, I just chuckle as i think about how many people cross the province and think of it as a pool table, they cant wait to get across. I lived a blessed childhood really, though i didn’t really understand that at the time. We lived in the country near a small community called Main Centre. And lately, we noticed that should Kim Jung Un decide to target North “M
erca with a nuke and do a google search for the middle of it, he might just decide to put the crosshairs right on this little ex-hamlet. That would be a bit of a waste for whatever resources he’s applied to his nuclear armament cache because the town is barely inhabited these days. In fact, the population of one-armed, metis, liberal Trump-fans at the bottom of the Red Sea would put up a fair challenge to the count.
Now if you care to drive, walk, crawl or slither a few kilometers to the north of Dad’s farm, you find yourself looking down into a totally different terrain than the flat tableland covering so much of the region. First thing you’ll notice is an elongated winding lake where the south saskatchewan river used to meander the length of the valley. Back in around 1967, the Diefenbaker lake was created by building a huge dam. This has resulted in providing the local region with electricity, irrigation, and decent fishing and waterskiing opportunities. And the surrounding badlands gave this farmboy no end of entertainment as i dirtbiked, hunted, fished, fixed fence and rode horseback “down in the coulees”.
They say its good to touch the green green grass of home and that’s a fact. It’s a bit of an emotional experience to travel through the area i spent so much time in as a boy and later a young man, seeing familiar faces in the old church and on their farms. It being December at the moment, I’m going to miss out on a few things. Chokecherries have about had it, deer season just ended, there seem to be no geese left in the area and the lake is freezing over, ending the watersports for longer than I plan on staying. Will have to return when those things are possible, but for now, I’m going to content myself doing a bit of riding in the hills, chasing some cows around, maybe helping my brother find his long lost cow-calf pair. They are jet black and it just snowed, and with that drone of his, you’d think she would have been spotted by now, but noooo. Maybe the coyotes pulled them down, maybe it was one or two of the wolves people claim to have seen here lately. I don’t know but we’ll keep on trying.
Then, after a couple weeks my kids will join us and we look forward to a family christmas together for the first time in a couple of years.
I plan on making a few hikes down there in those hills, just to trigger some old memories, some of which I plan to share on this blog of mine. Hope you’ll join me later for that and hope the season brings you the joy which we all know should be there the whole year long!
Skulltripper 