Dear Saskatchewan

Dear Saskatchewan,

Drove the 401 the other day and thought of you. The living line of metal crawling east and west as far as I could see probably had more cars in it than all of Caronport, and I had to pinch myself to convince myself I was there. Remember the good old days on Highway 1? When a broom-handle in the steering wheel and a brick on the gas pedal was almost enough to get us to Regina?

There was a report on the radio while I drove, Saskatchewan, about the people flocking to you from here for work and industry. The lady in the interview spoke in apologetic tones as she packed her bags. "If I told my friends I was going to Vancouver, or Edmonton, or Calgary," she said, "They'd understand. But when I say Regina... they say: 'Why would you want to move there?'" Go easy on her when she gets there, Saskatchewan: pour the prairie in slowly, like you did for me.

Don't get me wrong, I like it here. And there is something pretty poignant about being "from the West." The Elves of Middle Earth were from the West, you remember, and their hearts always ached for it. I can hum lines like "There's a feeling I get when I look to the West, and my spirit is crying for leaving," with real meaning now; and I can mumble lines like "though the last lights off the black West went, the morning at the brown brink eastward springs" with real knowing.

But when I got to the barbers and he learned I was Moose-Javian, he said: "I've never been out west. Is it really as flat as they say?" I laughed and said: "Yeah, and the telephone pole is the provincial tree..." Not to betray you, Saskatchewan, but I felt I would have only betrayed you more if I tried to explain. How could I explain what it's like, to stand at the edge of town and see the whole world, green and gold and hay-scented, stretching out around you, spread out like some great, shallow earthen-ware dish, filled to the very edge of its delicate, distended meniscus with unfiltered light?

Well, I'll try to keep in touch, Saskatchewan-- I'll try to think of you whenever I catch real glimpses of open sky-- and I'll try to keep the crawling lines of metal from wringing the prairie out of me completely.

But while we wait and see, take care.

Yours truly, Dale.