I remember driving the long prairie distances from Iowa to Alberta and on to BC with college students from BC. I remember that they were utterly bored driving across the wide open distances of Saskatchewan and Alberta and they complained loudly. I loved those wide open spaces and wished they would go back to sleep and just let me drive. They probably had similar experiences when driving into the mountains or onto the coast and appreciated it in ways that I could not. More likely than anything else, it is a deep, in-soul experience rather than a shallow appreciation of one over the other. I believe these inner landscapes have a profound impact on the rest of our lives in ways that might be difficult to articulate.
I did a little circle road trip: Langley to Calgary on Hwy #1, then on to Lethbridge on Hwy #2 and then back to Langley on Hwy #3 through the Crow’s Nest Pass. I don’t know that I can see myself moving away from BC, but those big skies of Southern Alberta are magnificent and make the idea more appealing. Big Sky Country definitely it is and it does something to my soul. Years ago when I was teaching Margaret Laurence’ novel, The Stone Angel I would read pieces of an essay that Laurence once wrote about the formation of one’s inner landscape. In the essay she makes the claim that the exterior landscape of your childhood forms the inner landscape of your adult life and that landscape becomes fixed in your imagination for life. That strikes me as true somehow.
I remember driving the long prairie distances from Iowa to Alberta and on to BC with college students from BC. I remember that they were utterly bored driving across the wide open distances of Saskatchewan and Alberta and they complained loudly. I loved those wide open spaces and wished they would go back to sleep and just let me drive. They probably had similar experiences when driving into the mountains or onto the coast and appreciated it in ways that I could not. More likely than anything else, it is a deep, in-soul experience rather than a shallow appreciation of one over the other. I believe these inner landscapes have a profound impact on the rest of our lives in ways that might be difficult to articulate.
1 Comment
Erin
6/26/2015 04:53:16 am
Lovely. Makes me wonder what happens to your inner landscape if you never stayed in one place for long...
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