outstretching

We live in such a magnificent, wild place. I have seen so much of it, felt seawater and lakewater rushing over me, walked through boreal, deciduous and coastal forests, felt cramped in our most crowded cities and felt small in the vastness of our wilderness.

One night in Prince Edward Island, I stood on a field next to the ocean with its ever-rushing crash of waves -- a sound so constant and easy that it seems almost like rain -- and looked up at the most spectacular stars I've ever seen. Not even my enormous Alberta sky could compete. As I stood on this island looking up at the sky pinpricked so heavily with light it almost looked like everything in the heavens was moving with the flow of some supernatural force, I thought about the distance between me and my home. Such vastness lie between us, my prairie and me, and I felt so glad to have treaded on so much of it. 

So often it is good to feel tiny compared to our universe, and it is this insignificance in the face of that wide field of undulating stars in a place so far from my home that makes me know that I am blessed. That moment, a sleepy stumble across a field in the middle of the night, catching sight of bright constellations even on the horizon and tipping my face skyward, that happenchance encounter with the works of God's hand, is my experience to have, and I will have it forever. I am blessed.

Thank you, Canada, for keeping so many wild and historic places safe for me to visit. I have been to nineteen national parks and historic sites so far. I can't wait to explore the rest. 

West Coast and our mighty North, I am coming, I am coming.

I am almost on my way.