Calgary

Swift Current

I didn’t see much of Swift Current; it was perfectly planned for passing through, with a service road lined by fast food restaurants, motels, gas stations, farm equipment stores, etc.  Once beyond this, you have the sensation of entering the maw of an inland whale as a morsel on the long black crease of it’s rough undulating beige/green tongue, rolling to the distant point where it meets the pale blue pallet and you drop into the throat.  Of course the image, if it’s apt at all, becomes less appealing if you look left and imagine what the eastbound traffic is.  I feel at home in this prairie landscape.  Like Lake Superior or the ocean, it’s restful in a way to be able to gaze at the horizon, although some might say boring.  I remember reading in the book of photos of Canada that we presented to the U.S.A. on their bicentennial a Saskatchewan farmer’s comment upon looking at the Rockies for the first time:  “ They’re not bad, but they sure do block the view.”

The rolling becomes more pronounced as you approach Calgary.  The fields are golden and studded with round bales, as numerous as the depressions on a Chinese Checker Board.  I stopped for gas before entering the city and when a young man came up to the window to fill the tank, I decided to ask him to look at my Mapquest  map to Joanne’s place.  What luck!  He had lived on Elbow Drive and knew a much more direct route, one I could easily remember instead of the bewildering maze I had been preparing to follow at my peril because I would have been taking my eyes off the road at regular intervals in order to get the next instruction.

I arrived early at Jo’s and spent a glorious half hour in her garden before she came home and we began our evening of  white wine, chat and a delicious lamb dinner at her golf club.  The weather continues warm and sunny.