Time flies, even when you’re just staring into the deepest recesses of the fridge hoping a snack appears, one that wasn’t there ten minutes ago. I should be more precise, it’s daytime that flies. Here in the valley the west facing hill sides are fired and glowing at 3:30. By 4:00, the valley is enveloped in shadows. By 5:00 darkness falls heavily and it can’t get up, not for another fifteen and a half hours.
Dawn and dusk are deer times. Earlier this week, just before the sun dropped, I saw a big mule deer buck walk across the road and leap a fence like he owned the place, which he does. He walked on through the sage like royalty, noble and heavily antlered, head held high. I was almost embarrassed for looking so shabby in his presence. If I had one on, I would have doffed my cap.
Speaking of fences, winter and the rush of shorter days pushed me into action. My personal infrastructure megaproject is now complete. I have prepared a compound to keep the dogs in (we always have extra dogs) and the deer, drifters and n’er do wells out. It’s a good fence and it looks great if you don’t look too hard. I see the flaws, the posts that aren’t square and the less than straight sections. I hope Mike Holmes doesn’t come by. But it serves the purpose. We’ve had no escapes yet and no deer, coyotes, bison, bears, ogres or dinosaurs have come through the fence. I’m the lone dinosaur on this property.
The last and most complicated part involved building three gates. For this I called on brother Shawn. We spent several hours on a weekend cutting 2x4s, some at angles for bracing so that when completed, all three gates were strong and recognizably rectangular, the way gates should be. My rectangles usually lean towards trapezoid, so this was a happy outcome. We used a lot of lumber and made a lot of cuts. For all his hard work Shawn received a loaf of homemade jalapeno cheddar bread, the kind of compensation appropriate in the Dark Ages, when bread was scarce and when life hung by a thread. Nevertheless, he was happy with his modest compensation or at least he pretended to be. Thanks brother, if you ever need someone to build a trapezoid-shaped gate, I’m your man.
The other day I drove down early from the madness of Edmonton to the insanity of Calgary to pick up an item for the River House. Once in hand, I broke for the quiet country. I started out on a lightly travelled secondary highway, but it wasn’t quiet enough. The skies were blue and beckoning and the countryside so alluring that to not travel the backroads would have been a slight and an insult. I needed the change of scenery. Big skies, old songs, and the crunch of truck tires on gravel are the tonic that tames cartwheeling thoughts. That, and sunshine.
As you’ll know, we and plants both evolved from a bacteria type cell except for those of us who won’t evolve out of a weedy stubbornness. I’ve known since I was little that I am part aspen tree. You could say that I twigged to it. As I grow older, I can be prickly like cactus and the mirror shows sagebrush. I have a knee and a toe that are both gnarled like cottonwood. On days of high skies I draw heavily on a cache of chloroplast. On those days I draw my energy right from the sun.
I was solar-powered the other day when I rolled down the window and drove into the hills and pastureland that separate the Rockyford watershed which empties into the gentle Rosebud River and then the Red Deer, and the community of Standard and area where rainwater, should it ever fall again, will feel the inexorable pull of the Bow River.
I could have stayed up there all day. You’ll appreciate that this unappreciated highland is not an hour out of Calgary and is just a couple hundred feet above the surrounding countryside. It is home to deer, rabbit, pheasant, moose, fox, badger, coyote, and bobcat. Cougars must occasionally pass through. Perhaps someday soon, wolves. This year a grey wolf was photographed near Medicine Hat. A few years ago, one was shot near Delia. At some point a pack is bound to leak out on to the prairies, but with them will come enormous controversy. We should be heartened to know that there is still ‘wild’ left on the Canadian prairies. We should be concerned enough to work with farmers and ranchers to make sure we don’t lose it. We solar-powered drifters can’t get by without it.