One of the negative things about being a teacher is that if you love the fall, as I do, you have to give up so much precious time outside, not just during class time, but there is all the planning, etc. to do. Sometimes the sun is setting before one can walk out of the school and head home. And if you work at a reserve school, you may not even know what you are teaching from one week to the next! More work! The horror, the horror!
So those few moments of autumn light must be savoured as much as possible. Thank goodness for those bloggers out there sharing their favourite autumnal sights.
My personal reading is now slowed down, and professional journals and classroom texts take their place. When will I have the time to finish my latest novel? Groan.
When summer ended I was rereading "Between Men", by Katherine Govier, a book which stood out in my mind over the years because of the secondary story running through it - the First Nations murdered in a sickening way because she made a mistake when she went to look for an abortionist. This second reading had me focusing more on the main female character, Suzanne, who is "between" men. An older politician for a lover, a younger hothead before that. There is a bit of a Dallas flavour to this novel. The series was on close to the same time this novel was published, but its only looking back now that I see the similarity. The winds of change on the Western landscape.
I liked that the former husband reformed. I guess it could happen, but I wasn't expecting it. I actually was hoping that she would leave that old cow-town, but, perhaps the message was that the cow-town was modernizing, and so were the people in it.
What was really interesting was the way that she notices how much the city is growing, and at the same time, how barren it remains. This is kind of ironic, as I really don't know this city very well myself, but have been there the past two summers, and I too am struck,now in this decade, by how much and quickly it seems to be growing, and yet how sort of desolate it seems. Hmmm.... Calgary, city of dust and flat landscape, doomed to sprawl over the land, rather than to create anything to harmonize with it instead.
I try to imagine myself living there, "between men", as the protagonist does. I find the prospect daunting. I think I still prefer Edmonton, the frontier city. I walked along the path by the Riverside Towers, I think they were called. This was all right, but could I live there, by the Bow River? I know creeks and that's about it. I prefer the boreal forest, the poplar and the spruce trees, and the wind. What captivates me in southern Alberta, though, is the sky and the light. I was born on the Saskatchewan prairie, but left as an infant, yet I think those early images of that world must have imprinted in my mind, and that is why I just might be able to settle in that rolling landscape. Why I might want to experience an autumn there, just once.
Northern Alberta, a windy day on the birdwalk.
So those few moments of autumn light must be savoured as much as possible. Thank goodness for those bloggers out there sharing their favourite autumnal sights.
My personal reading is now slowed down, and professional journals and classroom texts take their place. When will I have the time to finish my latest novel? Groan.
When summer ended I was rereading "Between Men", by Katherine Govier, a book which stood out in my mind over the years because of the secondary story running through it - the First Nations murdered in a sickening way because she made a mistake when she went to look for an abortionist. This second reading had me focusing more on the main female character, Suzanne, who is "between" men. An older politician for a lover, a younger hothead before that. There is a bit of a Dallas flavour to this novel. The series was on close to the same time this novel was published, but its only looking back now that I see the similarity. The winds of change on the Western landscape.
I liked that the former husband reformed. I guess it could happen, but I wasn't expecting it. I actually was hoping that she would leave that old cow-town, but, perhaps the message was that the cow-town was modernizing, and so were the people in it.
What was really interesting was the way that she notices how much the city is growing, and at the same time, how barren it remains. This is kind of ironic, as I really don't know this city very well myself, but have been there the past two summers, and I too am struck,now in this decade, by how much and quickly it seems to be growing, and yet how sort of desolate it seems. Hmmm.... Calgary, city of dust and flat landscape, doomed to sprawl over the land, rather than to create anything to harmonize with it instead.
I try to imagine myself living there, "between men", as the protagonist does. I find the prospect daunting. I think I still prefer Edmonton, the frontier city. I walked along the path by the Riverside Towers, I think they were called. This was all right, but could I live there, by the Bow River? I know creeks and that's about it. I prefer the boreal forest, the poplar and the spruce trees, and the wind. What captivates me in southern Alberta, though, is the sky and the light. I was born on the Saskatchewan prairie, but left as an infant, yet I think those early images of that world must have imprinted in my mind, and that is why I just might be able to settle in that rolling landscape. Why I might want to experience an autumn there, just once.
Northern Alberta, a windy day on the birdwalk.
If the Owl Calls Again |
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| by John Haines | ||
| at dusk from the island in the river, and it's not too cold, I'll wait for the moon to rise, then take wing and glide to meet him. We will not speak, but hooded against the frost soar above the alder flats, searching with tawny eyes. And then we'll sit in the shadowy spruce and pick the bones of careless mice, while the long moon drifts toward Asia and the river mutters in its icy bed. And when the morning climbs the limbs we'll part without a sound, fulfilled, floating homeward as the cold world awakens. | ||
