The Prairies
We left Winnipeg late in the day with the memory of a great show the night before still ringing in our minds. There are some shows that provide a reassurance that life on the road is worth the effort after all. Things just click on stage and out in the crowd are smiling faces, dancing people, enthusiastic newspaper and internet blog writers and happy bar owners. You sell your CD’s and t-shirts, make contacts, chat with like-minded strangers, get paid (hopefully) and then you move along.
The stage in Winnipeg
We were wishing that we could stay in Winnipeg a little longer as we began our long drive North West out of Manitoba and across the prairies into Saskatchewan. Our destination; North Battleford (about an hour North of Saskatoon) a dusty town about nine-hundred and fifty kilometers from Winnipeg.
Coming through the prairies in the dark is much what I would imagine purgatory to be like. It sounds a little dramatic, but nine hours of nothing on either side, and straight lines in front of and behind you, coupled with a distant destination that never seems to come any closer makes it easy for the imaginative idle mind to wander.
Headlights of the oncoming traffic shone softly though the fog and grain elevators and the occasional barn loomed out of the darkness as we rocketed through the void in a big blue van sparsely conversing with each other and listening to a quiet radio. I began to wonder how people came to live in such desolate places. There are no trees, no rivers, no valleys; just pale yellow and brown grassy flatness as far as the eye can see.
View from the Happy Inn.
The lights of North Battleford are visible from about seventy-five kilometers away and shone like an oasis in the night as we drove, late for our show, into the parking lot of the Happy Inn hotel. The people here are good down to earth folk and were waiting patiently with cold beer at the ready. Almost two hours late, the forgiving crowd and bar staff were more than happy with a two and a half hour set with no breaks, and we played well; as tired as we all were from our ghost ride across the dark prairie purgatory. North Battleford is not paradise, but we have been through here before, and I personally am looking forward to the three days that we have to spend here before moving onto Saskatoon and then into the Rocky Mountains to Banff.
Today the water slide. Then the Grey Cup and more music. But first a poem.
Saskatchewan
Driving into the twilight
everything looks like the silhouette of a ghost.
Train tracks are like a lonely line of comfort.
They provide a companion for the solitary road
as we chase the edge of the storm across the Plains.
Here the grain elevators are the only testament to the goal of settlement.
Or maybe more so they are the accidental result
of fatigue
or of circumstance.
“Welcome to ‘Such and Such,’ Where the Horses Got Tired!”
Or, “Thank You for Visiting ‘So and So’
This is far enough for now.”
The green pine scented expanse of Ontario and Quebec
and the white capped crags and salty rain forests of the West
lie behind and before us.
The sun burns the clouds out of the sky on time for dusk
as the last raindrop falls with purpose
on some flat surface.
A candidate for a future irrigation that
once it has done all it can do here
will be chased by some storm or another
some place other than the prairies.
Tour Tip of the day: Take advantage of all opportunities as they present themselves. You never know where a chance encounter may lead you. For example: The other day we met with Dale Penner, a seemingly routine meeting may lead to big things down the line. Tonight we’re invited to watch the football game at the house of a local guy named Clint. He’s a good guy, and it should be fun. Some of our best memories from the road have come not from what was planned, but from unexpected chance detours and random tangeants taken on a wim.
Tags: Music, road blog, Silver Creek
