I’ve just returned from a business trip to Saskatchewan and, as anybody who has been there knows, there’s a lot of country between towns. I didn’t bring my big camera with me on this trip but I had my iPhone camera handy and snapped a few here and there driving from place to place. It’s absolutely true that on the Canadian Prairies you can see for miles and miles.
There were odd little buildings dotting the landscape, some useful back in the day but long since abandoned while others appear to be stop gap storage or perhaps sleepover cabins for ranchers. This particular building caught my eye because its shape was so unlike the more square or rectangular buildings I became accustomed to seeing but whatever its purpose may have been it appeared to be abandoned.
Some little structures that I couldn’t make sense of were these little blue huts that populated a section of one ranch although this was the only place I saw them on my travels. Too small for cows, too large for prairie dogs, nothing seemed to be growing inside of them … ’tis a puzzle.
This section of train over top of a little bridge interested me. There was a lot of water to be seen everywhere … the farmers are a very unhappy bunch this year with all the rain Saskatchewan has had. Many fields are under water, can’t be accessed and therefore won’t be planted this year. Many that have been planted are lost for this season. This little waterway, though, was supposed to be there. The train I’m not sure about. Nobody was around so perhaps it was randomly parked for the time being.
Driving the miles and miles – kilometres and kilometres just doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way – one can almost hear songs being written. Songs about leaving for opportunities, the romance of sleeping under the big sky, life’s hardships and generations of families living the life. As I was driving along Highway 16 a Johnny Cash song came on the radio just as I saw this long section of train curving around the road ahead of me.
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