One magpie, one white-tailed deer, a few cows.

Last night, Brooks, Alberta.  I’d forgotten how flat the eastern part of this province is.  When I think of Alberta what comes to mind is big wide open spaces and conservative provincial governments, majestic mountains and dirty oil, the land of the 110 km speed limit and the people who voted for Stephen Harper (thanks a lot), friendly conversations, cowboys, beef, wealth and hockey players who say ‘y’know’ a lot.  Ya gotta love the contrasts that this province offers, not in the least the landscape.  From mountains to some really flat expanses.  Maybe I’m just so old that the tectonic plates have shifted once again causing the foothills to disappear altogether since my last visit, but I just didn’t remember it being so level.  That’s probably because I’m so old.

The field on each side of the highway goes on for hundreds of kilometres with no division from east of Calgary to the Saskatchewn border, as though it’s all owned by one person.  No fences or hedgerows anywhere.  There were a few cattle here and there and the odd oil rig or silo but nothing else.  No crops either except for what looked like just grass.  There were no barns, no farm houses, no driveways, roads or anything remotely associated with humans.  I even wondered on a land so vast, how does one know which cow belongs to whom?  Or are they just wild cows – the legendary Wild Ghost Cattle of Eastern Alberta!  This bears further investigation, indeed.

While we were pondering these things we listened to music.  Dad had left a number of CDs in the car – Meat Loaf, Simon and Garfunkel, Kris Kristofferson, the Temptations, Elton John, ABBA and Johnny Cash.  We also plugged in the iPod and listened to Golden Earring’s Radar Love, the finest driving song ever written. Music is a great mnemonic device, isn’t it?  When I was 9 my dad bought me Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits on cassette because it was one of his favourites, so it seemed appropriate to listen to Homeward Bound during the drive.  He also bought me the Rolling Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup at the same time, so go figure.

Tonight we stay in Regina, tomorrow we hope to make it as far as Kenora.  That’s a long drive, the kind of distance that would make Dad proud.

P.S.  We passed a few strange and beautiful things today, not least the salt mines in Chaplin, Saskatchewan where they mine sodium sulphate by evaporation while at the same time supporting the habitat of 30 different species of shorebirds on their way to the arctic to breed.  Those shorebirds feed on brine shrimp and insects that the saline lake supports.  Chaplin Lake is the second largest salt-water lake in Canada and in the middle of this landscape there’s a blind for bird-watchers and not a few feet away is the residue of salt spray collecting on the shoreline.  How can that salt concentration not be detrimental to flora and fauna?  Easily.  These are salt-water birds flying from ocean or sea environment.  Who knew that Saskatchewan, a land-locked province, would offer them a salt-water environment they need so that they can continue their journey north, with bellies full of shrimp?  Lucky birds.  Lucky us.