Little moments buried in memory.

I spent some time yesterday updating my Behance account – Adobe’s social media platform for creatives. They have a great app for creating offline portfolios. And as there is a lot of travel planned for this upcoming month, I thought it best to employ some digital tools this time – instead of carrying around my printed portfolio and being charged by the airlines for doing so!

I had to go through and re-export photographs from each series and in doing so for South by Southwest, was reminded of all the long jaunts I did with my dad to get that work done. I am going to put together some posts that highlight some of the outtakes from that work – today I thought I would share a few of my favourites from that first drive we did together back in July 2015.

Because it was the first part of July and the canola flowers were resplendent. And be thankful I am restricting myself – there were many, many versions of canola.

Part of each drive was spent spotting abandoned buildings and barns that were kind of accessible.

The worst thing about them – birds scaring the S*&T out of me as I walked up to them and prickly plants hiding in tall grasses.

Best part about these scouting stops was after we had turned the car off and walked away from the road we could hear the bird songs (as well as the insanely loud buzzing of insects) and by wading through the tall grass, you could find gems like these.

Stretches of pure crop were broken up by auto collector detritus…

and crops politely working around building detritus..

We finished at Wolf Hill. My grandfather was born here. The original homestead buildings are gone and the land is owned by another family now. I was hesitant to ‘hop the fence’ but my dad, as aways, encouraged this gentle trespass. Even with the long drive we faced back to Calgary, we stayed to watch the entire sunset in surprisingly bug free peace.

I go back to this sunset time and time again. Nothing else in the world compares to the space of the Prairie.  The excess amount of space that light has to travel and fall upon the land is extraordinary. It fills me with a feeling of freedom that is unequalled in any other place I have been. Perhaps this I owe to my father. His unbridled energy, his keen embrace of finding joy in everything he did, is here in this land.

These are the gems I keep, these little moments I have to unearth to remember.