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Wednesday 2 September 2015

The Prairies That Whisper To Me


(My brother Sean takes stunning pictures of the prairies.)


Fall. The sharp bite in the air.  The crisp sunshine.  The days so perfectly outlined they dazzle with their brilliance.  I always claim to love summer and I do, who doesn't after all, but fall is more satisfying to my soul.  It has a different depth to it than the light, carefree days of summer.   I love the vivid colors, the scents of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, wood smoke mingling in the air. I also find it a spiritually deep season.  Somber and profound.  Embracing both death and life.  Allowing us to do the same.

Autumn is all memory.  Sense memory.  Memory in the heart and the blood.

It's autumn in Canada that I love.   Where I come from though, the air fairly crackles with aliveness.  Everything is dying all around us but it's such a gorgeous celebration of life.  A dazzling, festive good bye.  Everything exploding with color, with flavor, everything beginning to settle in, preparing for the long winter ahead.

Last autumn was the first one in eleven years that I had been in Canada during the fall.  I was home for my sister's wedding.  From the moment that I stepped out of the airport, I was hit with a homesickness so intense that I felt at a loss to explain it.  Everything whispered to me.  The stark black fields asked me "How can you bear this?  How do you bear being away from this place?  Why did you go?  Come back."  And the thing is to others not from the prairies, these fields would be ugly.  They weren't the gold of summer.  But I've been home often in the suffocating heat of summer when the fields are golden with wheat, brilliant yellow with canola blossoms, periwinkle blue with flax flowers.  I looked and saw beauty but I never heard their voices in my heart.  Maybe fall is so stark, such a contradiction of vividness and barrenness.  Stark enough that I can hear my own hearts longings more clearly.

You need a certain depth of character and imagination to find beauty in the prairies.  To those who don't know how to look, it is easily dismissed as boring.  It doesn't have the drama of mountains or waterfalls.  It has the endless sky though.  It has this.  That you can stand underneath this sky and see forever.  You can stand anywhere on a pitch black night and see all the stars.  In the winter, the sky will dance for you.  Even in the summer some nights, you will see the northern lights.  And you can't imagine how you can breathe.  The beauty of the prairies is subtle and soul soothing.  You need to look to see it otherwise you will miss it.

You will miss the open, open prairies.  You will miss the sky.  You will miss knowing your own soul in the midst of it all.  You will miss so much.



18 comments:

  1. Home-how we love everything connected with it.Your post is a brilliant ode to your home place.

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  2. I love love love your description of Autumn �� it sings to me Thank you for this beautiful post x

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  3. I, too, LOVE you description of Autumn, one of my favorite seasons as well. I have always lived in the state of Georgia, in the deep south, except for two years of college spent just a tad north in Tennessee. "I also find it a spiritually deep season." Me, too, especially since my wedding anniv, our first child's birth, and now both of my parents' passing fall into this season...Your descriptions are so touching. I am printing this to share with my sisters. Thank you! joanwpage.com (Pages From Joan on Facebook)

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    1. Thank you so much Joan! How interesting that so many important things in your life have happened in the fall, no wonder you have a special feeling for it!
      Georgia must be beautiful! I'd love to visit the southern States one day! Take care!:)

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  4. Hello Colleen! I enjoy reading your posts so much that I have nominated you for the Sunshine Bloggers Award! Check out my post for the details http://wp.me/p6Am9U-4l

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    1. Thank you very much! I love your blog, I am so interested in Mexico and love the way you describe life there!:)

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  5. A season of rest. "A dazzling festive goodbye." Sometimes I view the fields with whispers of home. Home is where the heart is, but the mountains of pure perfection hold me homesick hard these days. So thank you for this tribute where I live and raise our young ones, these images will be theirs. Where all roads lead back to the prairies.

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  6. I understand you Alicia. Maybe wherever we come from whispers to us at times...

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  7. Hi colleen, thank you for your visits and your generous words, that made my day! So I could visit here today and enjoy many of your posts. You write from your heart and that appealed to me most!

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  8. Such a beautiful post! <3
    Keep writing.

    Shivani
    Wanderingsquirrel.com

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  9. Hi Colleen,

    I've been reading some of your posts and they are incredibly beautiful. Never been to Canada but I could picture the prairies in Fall just as you've described them. You should come to Kenya and see the vast Rift Valley. There are no words to describe it :)

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    1. Thank you so much Davina! I hope one day I can travel to Kenya and visit the Rift Valley, it sounds beautiful! There is so much of the world to experience. :)

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  10. I live in Kansas and -- yes, everyone from elsewhere thinks it's boring but -- I love the landscapes! My taste in art and design is a preference for lots of whitespace, and I think that comes from having lived in and loved these bare-ish landscapes with so much sky.

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    1. Thank you for visiting and thanks you for your comment Jana. I would love to visit Kansas one day!:) Like you, I find clear, uncluttered places appealing...I have a great need for space around me. I agree that it stems from the places we have grown up...all sky. :) Nowhere seems big enough after this!:)

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