Just at the town’s entrance, as I leave, a right-hand turn takes me off the asphalt and onto the municipal gravel highway system. I cross over the Frenchman River and up past Chocolate Hill on 614. The truck coming to speed seems to slightly float and then settle into the triad of smoothed gravel lines that extend out in front of me. The road curves left around the hillside, then a sharper angle to the right as it climbs into the coulee. The large gravel arc of the road flattened in the middle a good ten or more feet above the ground. Suddenly I am on the flat prairie, and any hint of the valley behind me is gone.
I feel for that speed where the gravel neither sings nor spits, and now the truck glides smoothly in the middle of the road. The sounds are those of years ago one hot summer night, Creedence Clearwater turned up on the radio, four of us heading into the evening with a case of cold ones in the Chevy Acadian with the windows rolled down. Deep in the Kananaskis, we would build a fire, sip on beer kept cold between stones in the creek, and talk… Then suddenly, ahead of me is a cluster of trees, a sure sign of an old windbreak for a farm, the only cluster of buildings in the middle of vast rolling fields that stretch out as far as one can see. Fenced paddocks, equipment, outbuildings, and hay storage surround the house.
The rhythms of the truck take me back again. I remember the Sheep River valley near Okotoks, where we fished for rainbow trout under the willows just above, where the rocks create a white frothing line across to the other side. Our lines trail downstream to the bobbing floats, and we stand midstream in old sockless sneakers and blue jeans. We had left the car at the side of the road, twisted the barbed wire together temporarily, ducked into the farmer’s field, keeping an eye out for bulls, and after 10 minutes in the field, we descended again to the river’s bank… I angled the truck to the left, then right, dropping again into another valley where Conglomerate Creek follows a serpentine course in the flat belly of the valley, a valley that snakes like the river. They seem to play across the flat expanse as the creek tries to escape the valley and the valley pushes back. I slowed the truck near the bottom of the descent; the XTC ranch entrance was off to my left, run by two families that raise breeding stock, purebred Herefords.
On either side of their entrance sign hung on a log stand are flags eaten in half by the wind. I pick up speed again; the road winds out into the valley and crisscrosses the creek.
The snow is white against the ochre grass below a cerulean sky; then, a cobalt creek frosted on the edges with ice appears on my left. I stop, the flashes on and I step out to take it all in. The air is unseasonably cold—an Anthropocene day, not the usual nine degrees but just above zero. There is no sound, but the creek; the water is gurgling.
The cold is biting on the hands, head, and through the jacket. I climb back into the warmth of the truck and begin again down the road; then a slough against the side of the mountain. I slow again to take in its colours against the rolling hillsides. I stand for a while. A single-car, the rancher rolls by, turns up a side road and, opening a cattle gate drives into his herd of prize Herefords. They gather around the truck expecting something to come of the visit.
On my return, on either side of the road as I descend into the Eastend valley are small clusters of farm complexes against the hillside. The clouds are thickening with a darker underbelly, belying what’s to come, as what is to come will not be a brief rainstorm.
