Foothills \ Breathing room.

I am spending time in the Foothills, at the home of my brother, Kirby, and his wife, Laurel. That word, foothills, one of the cooler compound words, mais non?

Mid-November. With several events and responsibilities behind me, I am feeling, finally, free; it's a splendid way to ring out 2012. With freedom comes time, and time is what I require -- coupled with space -- in order to feel creative. When busy, I experience life mostly in close-ups and jump-shots. Now it's time for long and establishing shots. Slow fades, in and out.   

Today it is -20 C. A bracing day, but the sky is quintessentially blue. So let's go for a walk, then. Right out of suburbia into the countryside. West, toward the mountains.

High River is Wrangler jeans and cowboy hat country. We're talking belt buckles, folks. I appreciate the community's big town feel, its proximity to both Calgary and the Rockies. It's become a kind of home away from home for me over the last ten or twelve years.

So I bundle in layers (double socks, scarves, pants, mittens) and walk, and it takes a goodly while, but eventually I become aware. Winter birds. How the cold magnifies the already-loud roar of rugged trucks, with gun racks. (Fortunately there are not many on this road, straight as a knife, toward the mountains.)

I smell the cold, pipe smoke, cows, and -- oddly -- marijuana. Must be a trick of the cold, in the same way that I also momentarily step through Venezuela's blossomy air. 

I pass large, block-like prints that could me moose-made, the tiny "bicycle treads" left by birds, mice. Bales stacked in a way I've never seen before: hay wall, straw backstop.

 

There are horses with so much space around them they might believe they are truly wild.

 



I only feel the cold when I take off my mittens to snap photos. One cannot underestimate the value of a good pair of mittens. Take these ones, for example:

 

A gift from my mom to my sister-in-law. Beautiful and oh-so-warm. I borrow many things. Laurel's long, hooded coat; a scarf my daughter knitted for her.

 

And I play with my shadow.

 

 



 

I consider the myriad textures of snow.

 

 

As my smart phone camera and I are new to each other, we sometimes make mistakes. I think I am taking photos when really I'm making mini-videos.

 

 

I believe I'm taking a landscape photo and find the camera's screen's flipped and, whoa, I'm accidently there again, sun on my shoulder, a frosty mane.

 

 

When it feels right, I turn away from the mountains and double back. Everything is new in the other direction.

 

 

I think so often of where we live, and how. What are the lives -- the concerns, the pleasures, the day-to-day -- like inside the farm behind these trees...

 

 

compared to the lives of those who dwell in the side-by-side houses ...

 

 

... around the man-made lakes it would be so easy to mock, but how can one fault a lake -- any lake -- even if it began as a blueprint?

 

 

I smile at a sign that warns that parents can't be dropped off.

 





 

And think about how I attempt to make art in my life, rather than making my life art. As they say, it's not the destination. Here's to the journey, and eyes wide open.

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