Alberta Pastorale
A journey through time and space  

The journey begins in darkness-
The speed of the car judged carefully
To prevent sliding into the ditch.
The sky lightens over Joffre
Revealing the towers
Of the petroleum processing plant-
Dreaming spires
Silhouetted
Against a cotton candy sky.

The range road is arrow straight
Stretching as far as the eye can see.
The prairie,
On both sides,
Seemingly what it has always been-
Flat and undulating,
From the foothills of the Rockies
To the first prairie step ending
On the Saskatchewan border.
Ice Ages have shaped it-
The retreat of ice scouring,
Creating the gentle contours of fields
And hollows where water gathers,
The home of ducks, loons and gulls.

Great rivers begin as trickles
As the ice pack melts
Over time.
In the Rocky Mountains,
Crowfoot Glacier,
After the passage of 100 years,
Becomes unrecognizable,
Only a couple of stumps.
The water roars down
Sluices and tunnels
Going underground
And pooling in expanses
Of milky aquamarine lakes-
Teeth-chatteringly cold.
From North to South
The rivers are named-
Peace and Athabasca,
North and South Saskatchewan,
Bow, Elbow and Milk.
They have carved deep channels
In the glacial sediment
And given the land its final shape.

With exploration
And settlement,
We named things.
But they already had
Age-old names,
Some of which remain
In words exotic and sibilant
Like Saskatchewan
And Amiskwaciy.
But this other land,
Where great herds of buffalo roamed,
And Aboriginal People had dominion,
Is gone.
Remembered only through historic markers
Such as at Tail Creek-
Commemorating the last buffalo kill
Ending the nomadic life
Of Aboriginal People
And Metis hunters,
Who rode across
The Great Plains
Unrestricted by provincial
And state boundaries.

The road twists
And then plunges
In a deep rift
Revealing outcroppings of rock
That jut out of the hillside
In twisted, crazy shapes-
Hoodoos-
Redolent of mystery.
These remnants of stone
Left upright
As the forces of erosion-
Wind and water-
Stripped away
The surrounding sediment.

A wooden house stands on the bluff.
Its blank windows
Like blind eyes
Surveying the beauty
Of land and sky.
An impractical location
Doomed it
Now empty,
And weather-worn,
It sits
A sign of some man's folly.

The valley stretches
As far as eye can see,
And one imagines the wind
Picking up debris
And carrying it
Across Alberta
And, then, down to the next prairie step-
Saskatchewan-
Which becomes a third-
Manitoba-
Ending at the waters of Hudson Bay.

It took a special breed of men,
Hungry for land,
To settle here
And break the soil
With steel plows
Or to raise cattle.
The labour broke the body,
Spirit or both,
And the next generation
Frequently had neither
The will or stamina
To stay on
And fight the wind and dust.


The wind makes the prairie grasses
Rise and fall,
Undulating like
Ocean waves.
It whistles past the walls
Of house and sheds,
Setting the teeth on edge.
The loneliness of women on the land,
Who did not go to town
For months on end,
And occupied themselves
With the daily round of housework
And the making of necessities-
Food and clothing-
Only buying what they could not make
Or grow.
What broke some,
Made others strong,
And some land holdings
Now, are the size of a small European country.
Failure and success
Are easily read on the land.

The play of wind and water
Has shaped these land forms.
Wide river channels
Snake across the flat plain,
The ravines they've scooped out,
Wooded with willow,
Poplar and birch.
At river level,
There is only stillness
Punctuated by bird song,
And it is easy to imagine
Canoes gliding along,
Stopping off at traditional meeting places,
Today's cities and towns.

On one side,
The river has cut a steep channel.
On the other,
There is a wooded escarpment
The rise in-between
Forms a hogback-
A narrow hump of land
That ends with a series of rock falls.
Standing on the promontory,
I play queen of the castle,
The wind whipping past me,
Making me feel truly alive.

 

© 2006 Adriana Davies