We’re still in Saskatchewan.  But now we’ve turned around and are heading west instead of further east. 

Today is hazy and hot and the road stretches in front of the car, straight, hard and flat, as we point ourselves toward the Pacific Ocean.

We’ve been driving past gold and green and white fields and swaths of turned earth the colour of dark chocolate. Saskatchewan had a very wet spring this year so there are more than the usual number of shimmering pools of marshy wetlands. Ducks float on ponds, paddling between the barely visible tops of fence posts.

Looking into the distant fields we see decaying barns and abandoned farmhouses sinking back into the land, while old trucks rust and wait under the trees and beside the tilting barns.

I love this prairie landscape and the town names seem familiar. Some names are from stories I heard growing up and some are recognizable from early family road trips.

This prairie world is part of the myth of my beginnings. My mother grew up in this province and my father was a Manitoba prairie boy too.

But something drew them west.

Perhaps the promise of a bigger world, a world less circumscribed by tradition and family. In fact, my father’s father warned him of the dangers of heading west.  My grandfather cautioned his son that if he went too far west, he might reach the edge of the earth and fall off.

My grandpa’s reasoning was irrefutable. The Bible said, go ye into the four corners of the earth. Clearly that suggested a very square and flat world. And in spite of a reasonably long life, my grandfather lived and died without ever venturing more than 50 miles from his birth place, so I’m sure it seemed like good advice to be giving to his headstrong son.

Which is why I am grateful that my parents, in spite of these, and other risks, dared to venture to the western edge of the known world.

Because as much as I find these prairies hauntingly beautiful, my early West Coast imprinting reminds me that I belong to the deep-green of the Coastal Mountains.

I’m looking forward to breathing in the heady tang of that Pacific Ocean air.

We’re headed west. We’re going home.