Last week I took some holidays and headed for BC. I have family that lives on the island and we discovered I hadn’t been out there for nearly 20 years, so I felt like I was due for a visit.
They have a beautiful place, which is within the city, but it is adjacent to a protected green area covered with walking trails through the trees. Now although I didn’t see bears or cougars, I was assured they were around and my uncle made the typical joke of, “How fast can you run?” before we headed out, which I didn’t let him finish, saying, “I think faster than you.” I knew the joke would be that while hiking if we saw one that he just had to out run me.
The trip reinforced something that I had thought about myself, I don’t really like trees. Don’t get me wrong they’re beautiful and amazing with how tall they can grow, how different varieties grow differently. They’re really quite neat. But, I don’t like them in the sense that I’m completely surrounded by nothing but trees. I love the prairies. And my version of the prairies in particular, there’s sometimes too many trees around here for my taste.
Back home the most trees you saw were windrows, otherwise it was wide open. There’s something in that vast expanse of rolling hills broken only by a row of trees there or a group of trees here. And where I grew up that grouping of trees meant there was a farmyard there, it wasn’t just a group of trees like it is here.
The water too was beautiful and we went for a short walk to a waterfall. It was all gorgeous. But for me it’s a place to visit. To go to and see, to admire and enjoy; but, the prairies are home.
People come out here and wonder about the beauty of Saskatchewan’s southern portion, which we’re by the Moose Mountains and it’s beautiful there. But there’s more beauty in Saskatchewan’s south as well. I grew up relatively near Grasslands National Park, so there wasn’t much but grasslands and cropland surrounding me.
It was windy there quite often, which I actually find kind of funny when people here say it’s windy because usually it’s just a bit of a breeze in my opinion. But, one of my favourite things on the prairies is actually watching the wind blow the crops. I don’t know if you’ve ever just sat and appreciated it, but tall grass or grain growing, it’s beautiful. The waves of the wheat ebbs and flows as if you were watching a small green or gold version of the ocean depending on the time of year and the growing seasons.
One of my other favourite things to do greeted me the day after I returned. We had a fairly good thunderstorm. Now, big storms worry me when it comes to wind and hail, I hope the rain doesn’t come down too hard or fast in case of flooding, and I watch lightning strike hoping the ground is wet enough it doesn’t start a fire; but, I at the same time lightning storms are beautiful. The lighting dancing on the horizon, and without trees in the way you can see each strike from top to bottom. It’s flashes here and there, but as the dark sky lights up, it’s beautiful.
We used to sit on our front stoop at the farm and just watch storms roll through. And you don’t get the full effect if you’re trying to watch that through the trees.
