You Can Take The Girl Out of The Prairie...

It all started last Tuesday with Canada Day. I almost need some air quotes around it - "Canada Day" (there, that's more like it). Resplendent in my "The Eh Team" t-shirt with maple leaf emblazoned across my chest, I headed off to work and...had a regular day. Canadian holidays are always tough - I know that most of the folks I hold near and dear are frolicking the day away while I toil the same as I do every other day among people oblivious to its importance.

Well, it wasn't entirely regular. I got to listen to CBC (for some reason, my computer at work has a love-hate relationship with that jewel of Canadian content, and successful connection is mystifyingly sporadic) and it was fabulous. Best of all was Eric Friesen reminiscing about being a little Mennonite boy in Altona and playing the Mennonite Concerto. I'm not ashamed to admit I surreptitiously wiped a few tears over that one.

But that was about it. For me, the for reals Canada Day started on Thursday evening, when I got my passport back from the Canadian border guard and we drove back into the north country. It was So. Good. to be back on Canadian soil. I only realize when I'm in Canada what a struggle it is to live in America. The tension of always feeling like an outsider, feeling like things are the same but different - it all disappears when I see that flat horizon.

And I realize how much I miss the prairie. Minneapolis may not be mountainous, but it certainly has its fair share of hills. I miss so much that landscape that stretches as far as the eye can see. I miss the canola fields, the broad expanse of sky, and that last edge of the sun slipping below the horizon.

You know where you stand on the prairie - quite literally. There's nothing around the next corner, or hidden over the next hill, to take you by surprise. The prairie makes no sudden movements, and although its very desolation can be perilous (see: Margaret Atwood, Survival), you can usually see trouble coming 10 miles away.

It was a good weekend, catching up with some (but always too few) folks. And catching fish - we took the kids fishing for the first time and the wanna-be Captain Highliners actually caught something, much to their parents' chagrin, who intentionally chose a lake known to have some of the poorest fishing around.

Sigh. It was so tough to get back in that car yesterday. Not so much that I dreaded 8 cramped hours with ornery, not-so-sweet-smelling children (that's pretty much par for the course already), but because Going Home becomes more bittersweet each time. It feels so effortless to slip back into the familiar, and somehow all the more wrenching to pull myself out of it.

But for now, Going Home (with all the accompanying difficulties) still beats sticking around here, so I'll continue to return frequently to the prairie and refill my oft-depleted reserves of wide horizons, sweeping skies, and warm embraces.