Taking in all the Prairie landscape offers the senses

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2024 (470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Past Treherne. Past Holland. Crossing the Cypress River. Past the great rolling grey wall of rain knuckling down at its lead edge like a fist made of cloud. Past green prairie filling with silver streaks and rondels and ovals of immediate and shallow ponds, big rain caught for now in any depression, however small.

Someone asked me about the places I’d recommend so far in Manitoba, the excursions we’ve liked best, though much of our weekend time here so far has been spent working on the house.

And I could only say that what I like most right now is a 100-metre stretch along most any range or grid road, on foot, the short slow pace from here to there, eyes and ears open to new sights and sounds.

A tangle of bare-branch hedgerow, knocked down and bulldozed into a dip on the other side of the road to make more room for potato fields, the black arms of drowned poplars and willows reaching up out of the swampy water, as if begging to be pulled back to drier land. The spring peepers, urgently explaining their individuality with identical rising notes, then stopping when you get close — they see you though you don’t see them, and they can’t be convinced to take part in conversation.

The air is still enough to gather birdsong from both near and far away, the low murmured regrets of the mourning doves, the rich trilling of red-winged blackbirds and the eager constant chatter of the collegial and gossiping sparrows. The cattail marsh has last year’s shattered seed stalks still standing baldly, some with small birds perched on top, the birds rocking to keep their balance as the stalks sway, fanned tailfeathers peaking and falling like small boats riding out waves.

The drowned trees are on the right-hand side, heading north. On the left, a small homestead, surrounded by a battlement of large trees — most standing, some not. And closest to the road, a set — a court — of impressive towering specimens that my phone tells me are white willows. I do not know if my phone is right, but it doesn’t matter. It is the kind of majestic name they deserve, the leaves bright and lined white and green and hanging down, dripping crystal drops of recent rain form their leaf-points, a raiment fit for tree royalty.

There is pasture in behind the willows, framed with the man-made straight lines of electric fence, and two horses swing their tails and bow their heads to clip the grass.

The road is hardpack with gravel, round stones hint at the hard work of oceans and tides, not this expanse of prairie.

A pickup rushes by, scattering small stones, offering a windshield wave from a hand that’s left the steering wheel for that purpose, a small face in the crew-cab backseat window looking at me, moon-shaped and young and curious.

At the far end of the 100 metres, the trees fall away, offering a horizon of towering thunderheads, backlit as if to emphasize their intent. The field bows upwards in a gentle rise too shallow to earn, let alone deserve, the name “hill,” and mosquitoes whine and hover and calculate their hungry angles of attack. They’re not alone: nearby, on branch-tips and grass-stalks, the slow-moving ticks await their opportunities as your brush by. They are almost prehistoric in their armour and steadfast intent. I hate them shudderingly, viscerally, but can’t help but admire their perseverance.

All this time, through all the steps across this 100 metres, the clouds have been nudging into one another to the west, bundling into one huge and bull-nosed grey mass, inching in from the horizon. The sun isn’t backlighting them anymore. The sun is instead tucked behind them, suddenly smaller and easy to hide.

The clouds break open without thunder.

Under cover, watching the rain pound down in fat droplets, until the grey-white curtain of water almost blocks my view. Smelling the rain, watching threaded rivulets coalesce into streamlets, and finally into a wide flow down the driveway to the ditch. Hail the size of peas blends into the streaming-down rain for a few minutes, as the second heavy storm to pass through here in the last two hours dominates everything.

And then it’s heading away, everything wet and shiny, the sun breaking out again as the storm moves off. There’s a scent coming up from the soil, a different one from the underbrush, and the willows smell of metal and sharp, familiar, almost feral sap.

That’s it. That’s what’s special and worth seeing. Hearing and smelling.

One hundred metres of new and wonderful.

Followed by another, and another, and another. Eventually, out there, a river, and a high razor-back rise of sand left from glacial events long forgotten.

Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@freepress.mb.ca