Kim Gentes

I am spending a few days in the Alberta heartland, visiting my dad. Alberta, for those who aren't aware, is in the foothills and prairie lands of Canada, just east of the Rocky Mountain range as it stretches up against the west along the North American continent. While Alberta has two large cities (Edmonton and Calgary), I grew up in rural farms and towns across this province.

If you grew up in a rural area, there are things that reside in your memory, ready for an opportunity to reclaim their place in your thoughts. Those things are as hard to describe as the land itself. So many textures, so many colors, temperatures, smells and so much time. As I looked at the land, I realized that it was not the five senses that explained the land to me best. It was something else completely. Something that seemed almost supernatural. It was the unchangeable strength of the land to reign over the power of time.

So much of what we see, experience and celebrate has transient value. People may be stars, heroes and conquerors, but time always reclaims its supremacy over them. Buildings, cultures and nations all seem grand, yet all succumb to the eventual grip of time. Time eventually tears down the people and always destroys their creations. Time even reigns over our very personal and individual lives, taking even the most precious parts of ourselves in the end- our own memories.

Time has no master, it would seem.

But there is the land. The land saw that time was the "irresistible force", marching through the eons, overcoming every created thing. The land saw that there was nothing to be gained in becoming the "immovable object".  Outside of an exercise in logic, the paradox of the two forces is not a reality. So the land thought, "I will bend. I will not wage war with time. I will not begrudge its change, its motion, its inertia upon every living thing. Instead, I will bend and I will accept time's advance. I will move as I am pushed, reclaiming in the wake of each scar or mark of time. I will celebrate and not become bitter at what time sends my way."

And this is what the land does. It does not defy time, it is propelled by it. The land has learned to master time, the same way an old trainer learns to break a horse. It allows the force to push and move against its own strength. In that, the land allows time to bring the rains in the fall, the snow in the winter, the flowers in the spring and the sun in the summer. The land doesn’t quit and become resentful. The land bears with time, letting each movement of times hands waft over the open fields of the land. And each season the land returns time’s change with its own gifts. Flowers, wheat, trees, brush.

What I respect most about the land is its mastery over time. And where I see true wisdom is in people who learn to come along side the land, shoulder to shoulder. They don't fight against the land, they don't spin and toil against time. They take the yoke of the land, and they join with it. They join with the only force that has ever conquered time and been served by it.

And those that work the land, and call it friend, have a patience and life that seems to become as steady and timeless as the land itself.

blessings