Posts Tagged ‘landscape’
horizons
Landscape is a fundamental driver in our lives. The spaces around us shape our experiences, our thoughts and our perspectives.
I was born and raised on the Alberta prairie. Although I love the woods and hills where I now live, I think my eyes are never satisfied when they seek the horizon.
When we drove across Canada in 2002, my husband, who was born in New Brunswick, was appreciative of the prairie landscape, but when we finally turned toward home, he was glad, so glad, to see the trees.
In southern Alberta, on the Trans-Canada Highway, we tried to measure the distance to the horizon. We took note of the oncoming lights and timed how long it took them to reach us on the road. One car, we estimated, was 17 kilometers away when we first saw it on the prairie horizon! On the Trans-Canada in New Brunswick, we rarely see cars more than 2 or 3 kilometers distant.
the prairie horizon of southern Alberta (2002)
What was the landscape of your childhood? Do you live in a different landscape now? How are these landscapes different and how are you different in each?
a longing for prairie
~
1.
what subtle psychoses
plague women
who grow on the prairie
and leave
to die in the forest
2.
memories a few words long
the chinook coulees at sunset the odd red of prairie mallow grasshoppers without aim
spears of foxgrass gophers beside their burrows willows by the slough
the rattle of the Texan Gate the tarnished dry of August
I want to run on the prairie
3.
I narrow my eyes at the ditches
imagine the weeds tumbling
to cover the forest with shortgrass
and sedges
the clearcut
and the barrens of blueberry
have the lie
but not the essence of prairie
4.
piled by the roadside
nine bales of hay
burst from the baler twine
left to the rain
piled three high into landscape
mountains, foothills, flatland
this last has sprouted me prairie
5.
trees form a tunnel
shut out the spaces around me
some days I can’t summon the words
the hay and the corn fields are all I have
and the hayfield shows the tines of the tiller
deep into summer
~
Published as: ‘a longing for prairie’, Whetstone Spring 1997
(revised)
© Jane Tims
a glimpse of prairie landscape in New Brunswick ... just a glimpse
landscape
landscape: inland scenery (Oxford dictionary)
When I see the beaches and headlands of coastal New Brunswick…
Saint Martins, New Brunswick
or the flatland and grasses of the western Canadian prairie…
prairie in southern Saskatchewan.. a dust storm on a salt lake bed
… I know landscape influences my life.
I also know my life has a landscape of its own, with hills and valleys, places to celebrate and places to hide, paths and roads moving ever forward. When I take the time to be aware of my landscape, to notice the detail and understand nature, I experience the best life has to offer.
landscape
~
a veil
draped across
bones of the earth
pointed tents
supported by forest
and the bent stems of grasses
soft settles in pockets
lichens and mosses
~
beneath the veil
texture
the ways I follow
quick or crawl
hollows elevations
clear eyes
or sorrow
~
the only way to understand
form follows function follows form
is repeated observation
lay myself on the landscape
allow my bones to conform
feel its nuance
~
see a field of grasses
see also awns and panicles and glumes
~
© Jane Tims, 2011
the parts of a grass plant (from Roland and Smith, 1969, page 68)
a woodland stream in southern Alberta
When we were children, living in Alberta, Mom and Dad took us for drives on the weekends. Usually, we explored the prairie roads or the landscape of the South Saskatchewan River. Sometimes, though, we sought the wooded areas of southern Alberta.
A place we visited more than once was a small wooded stream in the Cypress Hills. We called it ‘Greyburn Gap’, probably after the nearby community of Greyburn’s Gap. The site had a picnic table and shelter, woods to explore, and the little stream.
The Cypress Hills area is an eroded plateau, rising above the Alberta and Saskatchewan prairies. It was left unglaciated during the last ice age and has a flora and fauna much different than the surrounding prairie. Part of the Cypress Hills is protected as the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.
Elkwater Lake and the wooded landscape of the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park as they appeared in 1967
My parents were raised in Nova Scotia and were accustomed to the forests of the Atlantic Provinces. The Cypress Hills, and the woods of Elkwater Lake, where we had a cabin, must have helped them feel more at home in Alberta.
mixed woods of Elkwater Lake area (2002)
our cabin at Elkwater Lake (1967)
Greyburn Gap, Alberta
~
I remember a brook threaded through the trees like string
black water in the gap between gossamer and fern
a fence to mark its moving a fallen fir
to tangle its water our hands
trailing in the eddy
~
a jug of root beer sunk to the neck to move the brook’s cold shiver
into our summer bodies
~
© Jane Tims, 2011
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