I was born and raised on the Candian Prairies, even so I was one of the only people I knew who admitedly enjoyed travelling across the prairies. When I was 18 I booked myself onto a via rail bus which left from Edmonton, and dropped me off in Halifax. Not that I wasn’t stunned by the gorgeous scenery when we entered the Maritime provinces; I was, but the most memorable part of that journey was when me and my fellow passengers had a 30 minute stop in some prairie town during day two of the five day trip.
I had eaten all the Maltesers my friends had given me and was almost through the homemade granola bars from my mom. I didn’t, of course, have any cash for the rail food as it was expensive and awful stuff so needless to say, I was hungry and ready for a stretch by the time we reached this tiny town. We jumped off the train, ran across some farmer’s unused field and madly lined up at Subway for a sanwhich. I was after a BLT. A favourite of mine left over from my childhood. Although soon after landing in Halifax I converted to Vegetarianism, so this would be one of my last carnivorous prairie feasts!
Ten years later my husband and I packed up our house, and our three kids and did a final prairie good-bye. We left Calgary and headed North to Edmonton to visit my sister and her husband; garden fanatics! They have converted almost their entire 700 square metre property into a giant edible paradise, and it was harvest time when we arrived. We snatched at green peas, so perfectly ready and crisp. Dug up carrots; something my Grandma has always claimed to be one of the best prairie delicacies; she would have us bring her some prairie carrots out to the coast as she claimed the ones in BC just weren’t as tasty. We plucked apples from their tree, with my brother-in-law lifting the kids up allowing them to do the harvest. Once our bellies were full and we’d overstayed our welcome we drove to Drumheller; home of the Royal Tyrell Museum. While we didn’t go to the museum on this trip, we did manage to tour
the town admiring all the hilarious purple and red cement-built dinosaurs, much to the kid’s’ amusement.
Then we were off to Medicine Hat, the hometown of my dad and his mom; my Granny. My electric-guitar-playing, singing and hair-dying Granny! Her first comment when my first baby was born was “this only makes me seem that much older.” She never even wanted us to call her Granny when we were little, but the name stuck and she couldn’t shake it. In Medicine Hat there is the world’s largest Teepee, a brick-making factory and heaps of huge greenhouses in which they grow tomatoes year
round as energy in Medicine Hat is cheap. It’s the land of oil and gas. While we were there we stumbled upon another Medicine Hat specialty; the Leopard Frog. This frog was near extinction a few years back, but has recovered significantly, and while we were there on our trip we saw heaps of them to my 3-year-old son’s delight! Good-bye to 80-year-old Granny, and her house which stopped progressing in style back in the 70’s. Her basement, museum-like, never touched anymore as Granny’s knees are bad. Her out-of-tune piano is still against the wall adjacent to the bar that has been full of old cardboard boxes since I can remember. Her orange leather (plastic?) couch with its stiff and heavy cushions still in perfect nick. All the long-legged ashtrays (my Granny never smoked, but it seems it was a common courtesy at some point to provide other smokers with ash-trays in your home for their use) still sitting next to the twriling three-legged slime green chair, and the curtains perpetually drawn over the non-existent windows. The type-writer is one of the saddest I have seen; having found itself a good home, it eventually ran out of ink from one too many papers being writen, my Granny revelled in her creative writing after her husband died. The typewriter now sits on its otherwise unused desk next to the closet full of my granny’s old fur coats from the 50’s. Good-bye Medicine Hat.
One of the first things I noticed after landing in Nelson, New Zealand were the hills. Everyone here has a view, even if it is a “poor man’s view” as is how my husband’s uncle refers to his own spectacularly placed nest. He is perched in the crook of the hill, right at the top. His house overlooks the ocean and harbour, and faces North, something coveted by all Nelsonians. I think he exagerates. Anyway, the hills! We stayed with my husband’s uncle for the first two weeks of our life in NZ where we enjoyed his view, were charmed by his teenage daughters and laughed and laughed when he introduced us to New Zealand’s own; “Flight of the Conchords.” We would take daily strolls to encourage our never tired two year old to have an afternoon nap, but the hills were intense. We’d take turns pushing him up and down the hills in his heavy “push chair” and one day, after struggling to pass a 70 year old woman on a downhill, I commented that my ankles couldn’t take anymore. They had become so stiff from the descents, not the climbs, it was the descents which killed me! The seventy year old laughed, but said she’d lived in the hills her whole life so the ups and downs never bothered her.
Six months down the track I am finally able to get around without suffering from achy ankles, but by the same token I insisted on moving to a flat part of town where the only climb is from our carport to our house (about 50 steps up). And yes we have a view, or we did until summer came, but I’ll save that story for another day.
