Prairie Skies

It was a perfect late summer day for a drive, characterized by the hot hazy looking blue-grey Alberta sky.  It's not one of those clear you can see for miles skies, and I have no way to describe it better than that.  I did a lot of driving on Monday.  I drove 300 km round trip (187 miles) from home to Vulcan, Alberta and had a look around.  (More on that later... maybe.)

Anyway, I was doing all this driving at 110 kph (roughly 68 mph) across vast open stretches so wide that the only way I could tell I was actually making progress was the gentle roll of the prairie landscape.  I might go ten minutes without seeing another car on the road and though I would pass a house now and then, I rarely saw another person.   Alberta isn't quite as flat as some prairie places and when I topped one rise that I had been fifteen minutes climbing, let me tell you, the sight took my breath away as the whole world unfurled around me.

Even with the familiar confines of my car surrounding me, in that moment, I understood the word 'desolate' in whole new ways.  I was shaken to the soul by the isolation on the top of that small rise and left feeling more than a little insignificant. 

Two days later, the feeling lingers.