How Do I Hold This Land?

So many miles.  So little time.

Satellite radio ready to go.  The beginning has begun.

How do I hold the land? 

            In the palm of my hand...

            In the golden fields distinct from the black ribbon of endless highway.

In the dust of gravel grid roads where my uncles and aunties still make a living in the tilling, the planting, and the harvesting.

Most of all, in the sky so vast as to force freedom on those who never knew they needed it so badly.

I am rapidly learning that if you want to know my heart, you will see endless fuchsia skies and old, wooden grain elevators – the giants of the Prairies whose faces came closest to kissing Heaven.  

You will see this vastness of space barely large enough to fill the longing I have had for these rolling hills, these golden fields, and this dust.

Bug splattered windshields humble me – reminding me how the smallest creature is able to create a massive impact…literally.

Twenty-nine years among mountains and valleys could not choke the love of this place out of me.  Both dad and I agreed:  regardless of the length of the time away, when the mountains fall behind and the sky breaks free, the feeling of home is undeniable.

The songs of my people – European and Indigenous – are here.  The hands of my settler ancestors still sing to the churning of dust…their feet still dance out the rhythm of the thunder or hum of machinery. One “buying” land from a government which stole the land from the other.

Still they dance.

I am beyond grateful to have this time with my father, while I simultaneously search for myself in these places I knew loved me before I knew how much I loved them and search for my mother to place her in the places which will love her forever because that is the only time she has left now.  This is a time for collecting the pieces of me far flung across this land and holding them in this basket to put them back together while doing the opposite with my mom.

This is both the most painful and healing journey I have taken in and extraordinarily long time and it is totally worth it.