Pop 89: Prairie Time, Now

By Madonna Hamel

I've been taking long walks in the evening, starting just before sunset, knowing that even as I get further from the village, the sky will light my way for hours to come. Such is the prairie in the summer. I walk down cemetery road until the old community pasture, turn right, following the road that heads toward the site of my mother's family's old home, which is still there, caved in on itself. My grandparents, from Quebec's Montmagny region, met in Lafleche and moved here in the early 1900s. I'm graced to live near the place where my mother was born.

Sometimes, I listen to podcasts when I walk. Last night, I heard the Franciscan Richard Rohr talk about his book "Falling Upward," which is a reflection on how we start out in life on a journey outward. We step into the world, gathering ideas, opinions, forming a self needing support, encouragement and a sense of pride. The second half of life is a return journey, where we value the opposite things: a relinquishment of self, a humbling, a dropping away of opinion and need to assert identity. At least, this is what I took from Rohr's words.

At one point I turned the phone off and just listened. "Witness," as Pope Leo urges us all to do in a time of war - "listen so you can discern what to do next." What I heard was the repeated screeches of a raptor, yet there was none in sight. That's when I realized - I wasn't looking high enough, because swirling overhead was a parent warning me not to get too close to the lone tree on the gently undulating road that connected the two grid roads leading my way.

As I promised I would keep my distance from the tree and nest, I thought about the families already here, long before we homesteaders came looking for solace. Homesteaders forced to become like the ones we chased away, nomads, running from wars and hunger and violence, like so many migrants today. 

Last weekend, the artist Kathryn Ricketts came to Val Marie with her travelling piece, Tent Talks, wherein she hosts locals to have a conversation in a tent. "Going inside a tent," she says, "just as we did when we were kids with homemade structures, becomes a catalyst for conversations." Her tent provides an environment that is both private and safe and yet makes it public and transparent by live broadcasting it.

The event was held in the yard of Sky Story, my friend Diana's B&B. The locals were myself and Maurice Cote, a farmer whose family homesteaded in the area. The idea was to get a "local" and a "blow-in" - or what Maurice refers to as a "transplant" - talking about the land and the idea of this place we call home from two distinct viewpoints. I was thrilled to have the chance to bring a previous story full circle, one based on an encounter I had with Maurice eleven years ago when I first arrived. 

"Do you remember Maurice, when I was trying to get you and the Maurice Lemire to get the stove out of my living room?" (Maurice just grinned his messing-with-you grin. Just like he did the first time. ) "You were using the empty apartment as a storage room, but I wanted to live there, and I needed it yesterday. You finally told me to calm down. 'Prairie time, girl, you're on prairie time now,' you said, which drove me nuts. But now I get it! Prairie time is different. It's not marked by days and weeks and hours but by sunrises and dew points and weathers and critter behaviours!"

Here, where time and space share the same face, time is as much about geography as it is about chronology. And that revelation can only come from staying steadfast in one's home, another way of looking at homesteading - staying for awhile and watching the place grow on you as you make mistakes and have insights in place. And realizing that when long-timers tease, they are not trying to make your life miserable. Oh, rest assured: they ARE messing with you. But they are messing with the parts that need messing- the cocky, know-all, prideful parts that need relinquishing. 

Turning back, walking back home, taking the second half of the journey, I listen to the gently waving of new crops in the fields and the distant rumble of thunder. In the cemetery, the solar candles twinkle around Vi's new grave, reminding me: she always led us in saying grace at community suppers. I make the sign of the cross.

I'm on my return journey now, trying to slough off the scaffolding I once needed or thought I needed. I'm unbuilding an ego, dismantling a personality, trying to let things drop and sense the power of humbleness, seeing the gift in wounds. I'm re-assessing what "The Poverty of Spirit" really means: the spirit of simplicity, the opposite of greed, to be content to not define or defend myself.

I'm still on that return trip - falling upward to heaven and travelling light. Letting go of hurts and worries. Treasuring the sayings and advice, born of experience, bequeathed by men and women who have made this place their home for generations. Like Maurice Lemire telling me:  "If you have a cold, cut an onion in half and place it on a high shelf." It works! 

Two nights ago, the moon was an upside-down crescent, limning the top of a dark moon. I recall my friend Tony telling me years ago, "That's what we call a wet moon; it means it's gonna rain soon; just you wait and see. See how it looks like an upside-down bowl, so it can't hold the water? If the crescent was on the bottom facing up, we'd call it a dry moon." Sure enough, just as I get home, it begins to pour.