I’m sitting on a horse, Sugar Britches is her name, she’s hock deep in a snowdrift where I’ve asked her to stand while I peer into the branches of a poplar tree where a perfect little nest is suspended between three crooked twigs. The wind is rough-handed and flowing down from the North. I wiggle my toes in my boots and sniff a little before squeezing Sugar Britches with my legs and urging her down the sand road that runs parallel with the quarter section of natural prairie my dad keeps his horses on. It takes hours for the sun to set in Saskatchewan. It has started its sinking and a handful of brilliant colors begin their careful display — gold, then orange, pink, red, violet and the twilighting richness of indigo spread out against an infinite horizon with nothing to stop the wash of glowing chroma but the bony crowns of poplars where they stand in their established groves. The coyotes are flinging their voices to the sky, calling the stars into place. I rein Sugar through a gate, pressing the lead shank I have clipped to her halter against the thick of her neck, and we cut through a field. She grabs mouthfuls of clover as we amble, I don’t stop her, I reckon if I was carrying me on my back, I’d want a snack too. I slide my left hand under the crest of her mane to warm my fingers. I’m riding bareback and I can feel Sugar’s animal warmth rising up into my bones and I feel connected to her. A coyote yips, especially close, she raises her head, suddenly alert, and I can feel the coils of muscle that run parallel with her spine leap taut beneath my seat. I’m at home on a horse. Oh, what is a home?
If a home is belongingness, I’m at home in Saskatchewan. I have the greatest sense of belongingness when I am here. This is where I am from. But more aptly put, I am a prairie thing. I am of this dirt, this sky, this wind, this sleeping crocus, furry and blind beneath drifting snow. I am wolf willow and Saskatoon berry, shifting sand bar and flax field. I am antler and red tailed hawk, sun bleached bone and river riffle. I am all of these things and they are me. In a week, I’ll return to Idaho where I live, I’ll feel displaced, inward, lonesome for the land that grew me and the laughter of my sisters. I know this to be true so I allow myself to be found and swallowed up whole by the wind that pulls and pushes at Sugar’s mane and tail. I match the sway of my hips to the four count of her hooves on snow. I close my eyes, drop the reins, raise my arms wide and let the breeze wend round my bones and fill my soul.
The day greys, its light withdrawing from the winter sky till just the prairie’s edge is luminous. At one side of the night a farm dog barks; another answers him. A coyote lifts his howl, his throat line long to the dog nose pointing out the moon. A train whoops to the night, the sound dissolving slowly.
High above the prairie, platter flat, the wind wings on, bereft and wild its lonely song. It ridges drifts and licks their ripples off; it smoothens crest, piles snow against the fences. The tinting green of Northern Lights slowly shades and fades against the prairie nights, dying here, imperceptibly reborn over there. Light glows each evening where the town lies; a hiving sound is there with now and then some sound distinct and separate in the night, a shout, a woman’s laugh. Clear — truant sound.
As clouds’ slow shadows melt across the prairie’s face more nights slip darkness over. Light, then dark, then light again. Day, then night , then day again. A meadow lark sings and it is spring. And summer comes.
A year is done.
Another comes and it is done.
Where spindling poplars lift their dusty leaves and wild sunflowers stare, the gravestones stand among the prairie grasses. Over them a rapt and endless silence lies. This soil is rich.
[W.O. Mitchell ::: Who Has Seen the Wind]
You took me to a beautiful place…xxx
Thanks for coming with me! x
What a lovely thought: “The coyotes are flinging their voices to the sky, calling the stars into place.” You’re at home on a horse…and at home in Saskatchewan. I’d welcome you home, but I know better.
🙂
Idaho is a home too, to a lesser degree of belongingness though.
I’m happy to be back.
xx
Oh, you make me miss being able to trail ride and have open pastures at my beck and call. Unfortunately, in Houston, land being prime for real estate development, most riding is done in schooling rings and dressage arenas…which while pleasant, is so very academic. These horses have lost their wildness, they are like hot house flowers, well-versed in their disciplines, but lacking that primitive “equine-nity” (I know, not a word, but it should be!).
I agree with you.
And that SHOULD be a word.
Thanks for being here today, sweets.
Makes me yearn for heaven – I’ve got prairie in my soul, but never in my reality. I don’t think, though, that I will be frustrated for all of eternity. If not here, then there. Yes? Yes!
Thank you, Jillian. Lovely words and pictures…
“Makes me yearn for heaven…”
Oh, girl.
🙂
That put such a huge smile on my face.
You’ll have to visit Saskatchewan sometime. Try to go when the flax and canola are blooming side by side. You’ll never be the same.
x
Goosebumps, mountains of goosebumps. I felt completely transported, I could smell the sage, the unique warm smell of horse, the snap of winter grass beneath hooves. Ah, thank you for giving me those few moments of home. I forget how much the prairie is embedded in the molecules of me, especially after some many years up here in the northern forests and tundra. Thank you, thank you, lovely one!
Are you sure those goosebumps are from me and not the cold North wind? 🙂 The prairie gets in your soul in the same way it gets into your home as a layer of dust on the bookshelves — atom by atom, cell by cell.
x
Welcome back to one of your homes. I hope you had a splendid time.
Thanks babe!
I did.
gorgeous
I love how Nature entwines within us…Earth, Wind, Land, Sky
the familiar
the place we feel connection, birth, life
big and beautiful things to feel in your wide open space
inspiring
and all is well
Love and Light
You’re such a beauty.
Thanks for being here today, Cat!
Well said: “I have the greatest sense of belongingness when I am here.”
People kind of laugh at me when I say I’m a West Coast girl, after all of these years spent in Ontario – but when I’m west of Victoria in the places I explored, grew and that informed my soul – that’s where I have my “greatest sense of belongingness”.
Keep well.
I’m glad you know what I mean.
Long live the West!
x
For me the concept of home is both fleeting and inescapable but I know that, like you, home is not where I live. You’ve captured your own thoughts on it better than I ever could, so thank you for your beautiful way with words.
The thing is, I belong most strongly in Saskatchewan but I have a real sense of home here too, in Idaho. Maybe I also have a sense, when I’m on the prairie, that I can 100% be myself there. Maybe there’s a loosening of soul and an unbinding of spirit that takes place for me, when I’m home in Canada, that doesn’t happen anywhere else.
Either way, it’s good.
if ever someone was going to lure me, with salt water running through my veins, away from the coast and to the wide open plains, it would be you with your poetic descriptions. it sounds wonderful.
HA!
You are a selkie child. 🙂
I would love to be your tour guide and friend on the prairies.
In fact, I’d love to ride horses with you, barefoot and in cut off jeans, down to the river in the evening where the grasshoppers are strumming their leg guitars and the water boils in the sunset.
That would be heaven, even for an ocean going gal.
x
I could read about your “prairyness” forever. So much beauty.
Well, I’ll try to keep writing about it.
Thank you!
x
you put your finger on the pulse of belongingness more beautifully than anyone i’ve ever read.
i feel myself come home in your words.
Oh, Janet.
Thank you.
All love,
J
I really enjoyed reading your post today, and being transported to that wonderful place. Thank you!
xx
Well, Joanne! Thanks for being here today!
Gloriously vivid writing and your prairie soul beautifully conjured.
Thank you, Kate!
i know just what you mean by belongingness:
your soul is bound to saskatchewan.
my soul is bound to alaska.
yet: we meet in the winds of soulness.
xx
You beauty!
Isn’t that the truth!
Your visions and words sent shivers through my skin, and spoke directly to my thirsty soul…Such beauty here, thank you for shining a light.
xo
MJ,
Thanks for stopping in, dear one.
Thanks for receiving.
x
oh, that SUNSET!
ps XO
HA! And I was thinking to myself, when I took that photo, “Huh. Kind of mediocre for a Saskatchewan sunset….”
You know what I mean.
xx
forgive the hyperbole, but I feel as though your site is a sacred little place in the Internet.
That…is…just so kind. Thank you, Karen.
haha – yeah, we do have the corner on spectacular sunsets in this part of the world, don’t we?
Sure do!
beauteous writing…the wild…passing on the love with a nomination & some silliness with the versatile blogger award…love to stop by…thanks…
http://makebelieveboutique.com/2012/02/08/versatile-blogger/
Well heck!
Thanks!