After joining Travis Erwin's My Town Monday, my soul really soars to the wide open spaces out west, where my roots lie. I've been feeling it's time to return, but I will content myself with photos like these for the time being.
My mother would tell me stories about the times when she was younger: of seeing herds of cattle arrive from the south, as far away as Texas, to graze on the open prairies of central and southern Alberta; of how the trail hands were upset that the grazing land they had been using for many years had become settled and fenced; and of the fine horses that came with the herds. One type she took an interest in: a stocky white horse with Peacock and White Cloud breeding and Arabian blood to make it hardy.Photo Credit: Second photo by space_ritual CC=nd flickr commons.
12 comments:
Beautiful photos Barbara
Glad that you enjoy the music on my Blog!
Debbielou: Thanks for the visit. The music is great to read your posts by, and I look forward to more on the historical areas.
Nice pics. I love to visit other places but I could never feel at home anywhere except the wide open spaces of the west.
Travis: Glad you came. My yearning for the west probably stems from the amount of pollution in the Greater Toronto Area from Hamilton to past Pickering in the east. I became asthmatic after three years of living here, and I'd like to be able to breathe relatively clean air again in the wide open spaces. The key here being "wide open spaces" which translates into less populated density.
I've been to Montana and Wyoming several times and will never forget the vast skies and the beauty of the land -- such a wonderful contrast to built-up urban areas.
My grandfather rode out West with the railway just before the turn of the century (he was a labor lawyer), and before that, he homesteaded with his father in Kansas. I wish I'd gotten to know him better; I'd have loved to hear some of his stories.
What beautiful countryside. Having lived in only "cities" I can't even imagine what this must be like. Thanks for the glimpse into that life.
Hi Barbara. Thanks for visiting Regional Living Australia and for your comment on the picnics post. I am glad that you enjoyed it.
I will reply to the comment, but also put up a link to your blog on the main post. How about some more Canadian stories like this one?
Barb: Thanks for visiting. For anyone who has lived most of their lives in urban centres, the thought of living in wide open spaces might be quite daunting. The silence might bother some, as there is no continual traffic down gravel country roads, or airplanes passing overhead. Only the sounds of birds, crickets, bees, the whisper of the wind through the branches of bushes or the leaves of tall trees.
Jim: Welcome to my blog. It will be a pleasure to write further posts about the "country" places in Canada with their history, accompanied by photographs.
It really is "big sky" country, isn't it, Barbara. There is a sense of expansive quiet...
Gorgeous photos. I would love to spend a couple of days 'listening' to that silence.
In Iowa we have plenty of wide open spaces, but they're usually filled with corn.
Debra: Nice that you visited. The "bald headed prairies" it was called, that stretched from central Alberta, Saskatchewan and down into central USA to Oklahoma and parts of Texas. A remnant from the last ice age.
Monnik: Welcome. You can enjoy that wide open space in any of those corn fields. With all those plants cleaning the air quality it would be akin to bliss. Just don't venture too far in or you could become lost, and then you'd have to be rescued. Now that reminds of something I could write for a future post.
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