Life is Big

Chance encounters of the close kind.
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Life is Big

I met Sharon at a workshop at Mt. Shasta , California in 1992. We all sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. The workshop leader asked us to buddy up, explaining that we were to work in teams of two. Sharon and I looked across the circle, nodded and grinned. Instant buddies. That week we forged a friendship.

Our lives were vastly different. I lived in a house in the woods in rural Poulsbo , Washington . Sharon had an apartment in the heart of downtown Vancouver , British Columbia . Sharon, a single woman, had traveled all over the world. She was intensely interested in alternative medicine and the healing arts. I had children, owned my own business, wrote poetry and painted. But we shared one common experience: we were both women of the prairies. Sharon grew up in Watson , Saskatchewan , just a little east and north of my own home town of Harlem , Montana . We frequently shared stories of our growing up at the end of the road, in small town isolation. We had been near neighbors and never knew it.

Over the next several years, we visited back and forth. I loved Vancouver . Sharon took me everywhere. We walked barefoot through the goose poop in Stanley Park . We explored Granville Island , its Public Market and the galleries. As time passed, our lives changed. Sharon married Ron, a chef and restaurateur from Singapore . Ron is a whirlwind of energy, full of plans, with the skills to carry them out. I liked him immediately. I became an empty nester. My children flew off into their own lives. I found myself doing something I had never thought I would do. I entered the world of theatre. Sharon attended my first play. O ur friendship grew.

One Friday Ron and Sharon surprised me when they drove up to my house in their big red pickup. They burst through the door. “Guess what we are going to do. We are leaving Vancouver . Ron sold the restaurant. We are done with the hustle and bustle, the pressures of the big city,” they announced, both talking at the same time. “We came to share our excitement with you.”

Amidst hugs and kisses, I managed to squeeze in a query, “What are you going to do?”

“We’re off to check out restaurants for sale in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland . We’re going from the west coast to the east coast.”

The weekend passed too quickly. Monday morning I waved them off with tears in my eyes. I wondered when, if ever, I would see Sharon again. I wanted to pack a bag and go with them.

A few days later, Sharon called. “Guess what? On our way east, we stopped to visit my Mom in Saskatchewan . You won’t believe this. We bought a restaurant right here in Watson. It’s called the Quick Stop. Ron has big plans for it.”

Our visits became less frequent but our phone bills increased. Five years passed. One day I called Sharon , “Guess what? We’ll be neighbors again. I’m moving back to Harlem .”

“Sondra, I am not one bit surprised. You always talked about going home. So when are you coming up here. We have a room waiting for you.”

And so we have resumed our cross-border trips, only now a thousand miles to the east. I like Saskatchewan . I feel at home up there.

This morning I called Sharon . She and I talked for an hour. We caught up on recent details of our lives. Ron has expanded the restaurant again. He added a room to house their new machine to manufacture perogies. They also bought the five acres of brush-land they took me to see on my last trip. They’ve cleared a patch and planted spruce and irises.

After our call, I stood in my doorway and watched the puffy clouds roll north, listened to the rain beat a tattoo on my red metal roof, inhaled the aroma of wet mud and lilacs, conscious that Sharon was unlocking the front door of the Quick-Stop and smelling the same fragrances. We are both back where we started. Prairie girls again.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door.
June 10, 2010
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Abducted by Aliens in Saskatchewan

Abducted By Aliens in Saskatchewan
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Recently I drove up to Saskatchewan to visit Sharon, my buddy since the early 1990’s. Though we both had settled on the West Coast ‘forever’, serendipity brought Sharon and me back to the plains, one after the other. Sharon and her husband Ron, an immigrant from Singapore and a chef, own and operate the Quick Stop Diner in Watson, a town two hours north of Regina . The trip is a good day’s drive, in this country where distance is computed in hours. The foothills and plains give way to true prairie. The unexpected modern city of Regina erupts from the flatland like a Disney dream. I turn north into marshy country. I look for elk and moose browsing in the brush, but this time of year I only see V clouds of geese quilt the blue sky.

The Quick Stop was still open when I arrived in Watson, a town about the size of Chinook. Hugs and hellos. Tea. Introductions to friends. The place buzzed with activity. Sharon and Ron bounced between serving customers and quick stops at my table for stories and laughter. At closing time I swept the floor and wiped down counters. We walked a few short blocks to their home.

Besides their culinary talents, Sharon and Ron are trained in several aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. Sharon lounged on my bed. On the dresser sat an open box, filled with strange heavy open-ended bulb-like glass objects. There must have been thirty. I picked one up. “What is this?”

“Cups. Acupuncturists use them to aid in pain relief and healing.”

“How do they work?”

“I’ll give you a treatment.” Within minutes I lay face down on the bed. I closed my eyes. I felt brief startles of heat as each cup sucked onto my bare back. I remember flashes of light. I’m not sure what happened next. I lost track of time. Maybe this is when the aliens abducted me. Sharon removed the cups, and covered me with quilts. I slept like a baby.

The next morning after my shower, I looked into the mirror. Crop circles covered my back, just like those tracks mysteriously left by space ships in wheat fields or grassy pastures. Hmmm. I mentally ran a body scan. I felt great. However, later that day I discovered irrefutable evidence that my body had been taken over by alien forces.

When I walked through the living room Ron sat watching a curling match on the tube. Canada versus Scotland . I stopped, mesmerized. I couldn’t move. Please understand--all my life, sports, any and all sports, have held no interest for me. Zero. Zip. Nada. I once forced myself to endure an entire football game to impress a man. It didn’t work. I couldn’t fake it. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, bowling, golf, ping-pong; not my game. I just want to stay home curled up with a good book.

But as I watched the Canadian bend low and hurl the stone down the ice, I felt a curious frisson of electricity move up my spine. I backed into a chair, keeping my eyes focused on the action. I turned to Ron, “What is this?” He explained the rudiments. I learned a whole new language. The lead curler is the skip. The thingy which looks like a turtle with a handle, sent sailing across the ice, is called the rock. Don’t those words feel good in your mouth? The men shooshed the rock as closely as possible to the center of the house. The other team blasted the rock out of the house. Back and forth it went. I could hardly breathe for the tension. I heard the term ‘rock around the house’. Who could not like that? I cheered when the rock landed on the button, the center of the target, which looks like a bull’s eye. I groaned when Scotland had the hammer, the last shot. And something deep within me felt satisfied, fulfilled, as I watched grown men with brooms sweeping for all they were worth.

I love it! I want more. I am possessed. Some people think watching curling is the equivalent of watching grass grow or paint dry. (Insert your cliché of choice here.) But to me curling holds thrills, action, tension, fast pace, and skill. There is only one logical explanation for this incredible transformation. Aliens had abducted me and had injected this fascination with sport of curling deep into my psyche. I like this new me, but my Harlem friends treat me with skepticism and even suggest I might want to check in to someplace quiet for a nice little rest. However, the reporter from “National Enquirer” will arrive any minute to interview me about my alien abduction experience. I don’t know how he found out. I don’t read the tabloids; really I don’t. Well, maybe I peek at the front covers in the grocery check out lines, but who doesn’t? And while I wait for him, I am avidly organizing a group trip to the new curling rink in Shaunavon. After Shaunavon, we’ll go to Medicine Hat for a tournament. Then on to Calgary for a hot meet with the rival team from Edmonton . So, how about it? Want to join us, eh?
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Crossing the Border

Crossing the Border
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When I was twelve my family and I drove to Canada for a picnic. I was excited. Crossing a true international border! Going all the way to Canada ! Oh, man, I couldn’t wait! I had never been further from home than Chinook. I had devoured my cousin Jim’s issues of “National Geographic”. I read my copy of “Around the World in 1,000 Pictures” a thousand times. I memorized the pictures. And now, a trip to a foreign country! I was almost afraid to breathe for fear my Dad would change his mind.

I had boundless expectations. I would hear a different language. I would see onion-domed palaces and golden minarets. I dreamed of jeweled exotic costumes, lush terrain, jungle animals and palm trees.

We crossed the border at Turner and drove to Climax, where I faced one of the huge disappointments of my twelve-year-old life. Because nothing changed. Canada had the same rolling terrain as Montana . Same prairie. Same wheat fields. Same cattle. The same Levis and Stetson hats. We slowly drove up and down the street in Climax. We could have been in Hogeland, Harlem or Dodson. We chose our picnic spot beneath the shade of a cottonwood tree. Same mosquitoes. Same unrelenting wind blowing grit into our food. An afternoon in a foreign country. We might as well have stayed home.

Since that trip, when my youthful expectations were crushed, I have had the opportunity to cross many borders, cultural and geo-political, north, south, and across the big waters. I have been to China . I’ve been to India . I’ve been to Japan . And I am fortunate to count numerous trips to visit friends and see the sights in the countries of our nearest neighbors, Canada and Mexico . I’ve experienced exotic architecture, dress, food, customs, and most of all, beautiful people. My travels have changed me.

Today, I frequently choose to satisfy my passion for international travel with a short jaunt into Saskatchewan . I drive through lush Montana prairie, where the deer and the antelope play, where meadowlarks warble on fence-posts, where red-tailed hawks and eagles criss-cross the sky, where a coyote slinks along the highway, unafraid.

I cross the border at Turner/Climax. At customs I declare nothing more dangerous than imagination. I continue a few kilometers north and pull my car off the road onto the edge of a bluff. Far below, the Frenchman River threads a glacier-gouged gorge through the lush Canadian prairie.

I look around me. Nothing has changed. It is still the same landscape, same wheat fields, same wind, same mosquitoes, same small towns with wind-scoured buildings pinned to the map by lofty grain elevators. Same geography. Different me.

So if you want to see what I see today, you have to stop. Here on the bluff is a good place. You must get out of your car. Put on a hat with a big wide brim so you don’t get sun-burned. Walk away from the car. Find a nice big rock and sit down. Plan to stay at least an hour. Breathe deeply. Let your eyes scan the vista. Pick an area. Notice the colors. Isolate the details. Imagine the sound of the water far below. Listen to birdsong. Feel the wind on your skin. I guarantee you will change your perspective. It is like getting a new pair of glasses.

Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why not join me? We’ll pack a picnic lunch, load up paints and canvases, c-clamps to secure the canvas onto the easels, sandbags to keep the easels to the ground and a case of “Death to Mosquitoes!” And let’s make this is a two day trip. So grab a book or two for the night in a motel in Shaunavon.

When we cross the border back into Montana we’ll have a lot to declare. We’ll have captured all the subtle shades of the Frenchman Coulee, identified birds, painted tiny prairie wildflowers that people whizzing by on the highway never see. We’ll have made friends with a gopher or two. And yes, we’ll take back mosquito bites, despite our best efforts with sprays and ointments.

And, if the light is just right, we will feel compelled to unload our canvases and set up the easels again, to paint Woody Island Coulee. Then, instead of a picnic, let’s grab a bite to eat at the Border Bar in Turner.

We’ll be full of our adventures. Maybe one of the Turner residents will saunter over to our booth and say, “Mind if I join you? Where you been?”

“Oh, man, wait till you hear. We just returned from a foreign country. It was great, really beautiful. You ought to go there sometime.”
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