Sooo a few days a week I commute to Saskatchewan for work. it's about 3 hours there, 3 back. You'd imagine this would get tiresome. but..I love it. I love driving. I always have. I got my license at a very late age (25) but suffice to say, I've more than made up for not having it by all the kms I've thrown on TGM in the last 5+ years. Remember, I'm that person who once drove 6 hours just to give someone pickles. sure..there was more behind it than just the drive. but had I not loved driving as much as I do, that scenario would never have happened.
I especially love driving at this time of year. It's been an unseasonably warm september. as short as a week ago we were in the high 20s for temperature. but that doesn't deter the leaves from changing. (Sidenote, that's because the changing of the leaves is based on moisture content in the soil and a trees weird predisposition to knowing when to stop absorbing said moisture)
the long thoughtful drives each week remind me of Ontario, and cause instant and strange moments of nostalgia for me.
I've probably, in the last 4 months, gone out there 50 or more times. I've memorized the landscape. the ponds, the farmers fields. every rv in every driveway. the dips and curves and every stretched out field of wheat. Everyone is harvesting now. coating the air with that dusty misty mix of soil and husk, like yellow fog overtaking the roads. There's a specific point on highway 16 where the road arks up what seams like an impossible angle, a petro canada highway pull out sits on top of the hill, it curves to the left and once you've reached the apex it's just a daunting landscape of trees and field as far as you can imagine. there's always been a long standing joke regarding saskatchewan, and if your dog runs away, you can just watch him run for days. because there is no landscape to speak of. just fields and flatness and thousands of miles of big blue sky. I'm sure we (and sask) put texas to shame with our atmosphere. but I have no real life ability to compare.
it's fitting that this hill, this curve, this vast outstretch of land reminds me of my many trips to and from southern ontario. as there's a specific point just after ajax where the highway reaches an apex at the top of the hill, the city lights drop away completely and all that is left is a vast forest of trees and rock and memories that I'm far too polite to recount. maybe that's where the nostalgia fits in. who knows.
it's on these trips that I do my best thinking, and my best full lung belt it out singing. I'll miss these trips once the snow flies and I'll be stationed in the city full time. but for now, I'll hang on to them as tightly as I can.