The End of the Rainbow

Somewhere over northern Ontario, the highway leads directly to a pot of gold.

New Horizons

The Great Plains compose roughly 20% of Canada's geography. This prairie expanse stretches all the way from the Rocky Mountains in Alberta to the Canadian Shield in northern Ontario. In the middle of all of that flatness is the province of Saskatchewan, from border to border, horizon to horizon, east to west, and as far as the eye can see lie dirt roads and highways beckoning forward, large green fields, train tracks, silos, and miles and miles of earth meeting sky on the horizon. 

These horizons were brand new to me. I'd only been to Saskatchewan once on land, and that was just for the sake of saying I'd been there. Now, I had 9 hours of driving to take it all in and enjoy the simple beauty that was all around me.

Black and white...

glorious colour...

...and all the new horizons that came with them.

Before and After

 We all have events in our lives that define our chapters. Life is different before and after that moment or that event or that person: the death of a loved one, making a new friend, graduating, moving from the east coast to the west. Sometimes these pages are turned without our even realizing, or they sneak up and knock us off our feet in the middle of living our lives. Sometimes, though, they're meticulously planned: the culmination of months of focus, the acclimation of a goal we set and strive toward with every bit of our being.

The latter was the case in July of 2020. 

In the midst of a global pandemic, my time had come. My life needed change, and I was finally ready to make it. 
But first, one last 'before that happened' mission: show me the Alberta prairie. Show me canola fields and abandoned farm houses, and show me that big. blue. sky.

She happily obliged.

There are things in life you never expected before they happened, and things that you never expected to miss after they're gone. But I've learned that life is not about expectations at all, but about the now, and that the only thing that exists in the past and future are the categories: the before and the after.