turner valley

about an hour south of calgary is turner valley. this is where my dad lives with his partner holly. i'm at their house right now, a duplex among a half-circle of identical duplexes nestled between the ridge and a golf course. really, its a retirement community.

currently this house, usually a haven of order and quiet, is chaotic and upended. the recent rains forced ground water into the basement, so most everything from down has been moved up. at the same time, the kitchen is mid-renovation; cupboards have been empited, backsplash ripped off, floors impossibly dusty. and the stuff scattered throughout the house. (last night i slept beside the crockpot, wok and salad spinner.

my dad and i walked along the sheep river on our way to town. the river, usually a clear stream running in a shallow course over river rocks, is muddy and full. you can see by the erosion of the banks the height that it got to not even two weeks ago. a huge tree lies sideways to block the route down to the shore. this tree, my dad tells me, was caught under the bridge when it got washed out of its home many miles upriver. now it bars the was with an orange sign: ROAD CLOSED.

as we walked along the road the sun shone on us and the mosquitos buzzed around our ears. the blue sky was huge. that is one thing i miss about the prairies: how far you can see. and the clouds are majestic. they seem to float so much higher off the ground than our pacific clouds do. and their presence there seems to expand the sky rather than fill it up, as if each new cloud adds to the potential of more clouds, more objects filling the air, rather than occupying space and narrowing possibility.

my dad waves at his neighbours as they drive by and comments that everyone who lives here does so because they want to live here. that sounds like paradise to me. now, if we could only do something about all of the mosquitos...