#6: Out of the Woods

Although I am now in Vancouver (I've not had a lot of access to the internet for the past few days), my blog-brain is still driving out of Ontario into the province of Manitoba.

 I suppose that is why I was so attuned the other evening to the phrase, "four days to get out of Ontario", spoken at the table next to ours at a restaurant in Banff.  An older couple were having an animated conversation with their server, and once again, I was luckily within earshot!

These two were apparently from Brockville, east of Guelph, so it would, indeed, have taken them a little longer to reach the Manitoba border.  "But" enthused the woman, "even though the forest is endless, the drive was fascinating!"  Good for her, I thought. A fellow rock-n-tree enthusiast!

"And", her husband continued, "who says the prairies are boring and there is nothing to see?"  That is so wrong! I almost put a crick in my neck I was so busy looking at that huge sky!" He swiveled his head from side to side to make his point.

At that point, I put my head down and pretended to eat my dinner so he wouldn't see my smile of absolute agreement.  Surely the prairies are Canada's most under-appreciated landscape!

Manitoba sky from the window of the Mazda

For me, the sudden magical transport from rocky landscape to flat prairie never ceases to delight.  In one hour, the Trans Canada Highway descends from forested highlands onto broad, grassy plains and there it is before you -- green and gold fields,  glinting marshes fringed with wildflowers, a few scrubby bushes, and above all, the vast changing sky that stretches from one horizon to the other.

The province of Saskatchewan recognizes, with its provincial motto Land of Living Skies that on the prairies,  landscape = sky.   Depending on the time of day or the weather, you never can tell what you will experience; we could very well have headed out over the Manitoba plains into a magnificanet sunset or a thunder storm.  (The storm would have been fine with me. There is nothing more iconic than billowing black clouds over a golden field where a phalanx of harvesters are attempting to outrun the encrouching onslaught.)

From the front seat of our little Mazda, however, we rejoiced in perfect, puffy clouds in a vast noon-time expanse of blue.  I, too, almost put a crick in my neck.  I am a prairie girl at heart and that big sky always says, "Welcome home".