I had never seen one in real life, so it is a guess that I am making that this is a magnolia tree. I think the images on Wikipedia match well enough to say this is probably correct.
This was not a tree I noticed in the previous seasons, but when I saw it blooming on the afternoon of my last exam in April, it became the thing I remember clearest of this term’s finals. After a particularly exhausting last test, I left the exam room like one leaves a shopping mall or movie theatre. I had been in a windowless room, entering it from a cool and rainy spring morning, and emerging into falling snow. The spring weather was similar to the typical London autumn snow, with snowflake clusters so large they slide from the sky rather than twirl and spin on the thermal currents. Out of sync with it, I felt I had emerged into a different season.
Then, walking to the bus stop, I saw what I thought were suspended snow clusters refusing to fall: snow balls hanging mid-air. It took a bit to process, but there it was, these marvelously large white flowers emerging in a landscape of bare branches and late spring snow falls. I had my introduction to magnolias.
And a later-flowering pink variety, the buds are perhaps 1.5 inches tall.
According to Wikipedia, Magnolia is an ancient genus, with plants of this family existing in fossil records as old as 95 million years. They have existed longer than bees, and it is hypothesized that their flowers evolved to be pollinated by beetles.
It may seem that for Canadians the world of war and political conflict is far away. This is a fact that often leads people to make this country their home, to hope for the safety and prosperity of their children, and to look forward to a long and peaceful old age.
But when violence erupts in other parts of the world, and we experience our connection to it, we are reminded again of how the majority of us living in Canada now have our ancestry in places outside our country. In recent years, it feels like so many people in my life are grieving for friends and families displaced or killed in other places, or worried for them.
I chose this post’s topic in consideration of how much disruption irresponsible leaders unleash on the world. Currently, several of my courses have included some type of study on population growth/decline. What I see in the overall story of humans is that despite the death and suffering they inflict on so many people, dictatorships with their big wars and the bankrupt economies they create, are unable to make any significant change. They do nothing to disrupt the underlying patterns of life. They are meaningless to history once those they harm are gone.
Canada goose on a roof of the geological sciences section of the natural sciences buildings. Western University (UWO). London Ontario. March 2022.
In London, Ontario, at this time of year, one such reminder (albeit not human) is the Canada Goose. It was noisy on campus last week, a constant reminder of the continuity of life, as I will explain. On Monday, I set one rule: while on campus I would take a picture of every goose on a roof that I encountered. To try to keep with the rule, I eventually had to stay inside as much as possible, because it took a lot more time from the day than I expected.
University College Building. UWO.
Western University is home to year-round geese residents. During the fall and winter they are rather docile. They travel in large groups, usually grazing across the lawns. When the oak trees drop their acorns the geese converge to the sidewalks under these trees shortly after every class-change. The crowds of students walking across the seeds breaks open the shells and the geese rush in to take them.
The day began with this loner calling out.Another honker at mid-morning.By the afternoon, pairs began to form. Four geese claim some of the engineering buildings.An oak tree at Talbot College building, with a scattering of acorns. Fall 2021.(Click on an image to enlarge–some of the birds aren’t visible in the gallery layout.)
At this time of year, the birds begin their fight for territory and mates, and start to pair off. One way to attract a potential partner is to claim a roof and commence the noisy mating call process. By Friday, the birds had begun to settle down. But very soon, the nests and the eggs will happen and then goslings. At this point, it is not uncommon for students to be attacked by ground and by air, should they enter goose-occupied zones.
The food truck that pays homage to the UWO geese population. Do you see the two bosses looking down from above?
This week the buds on the trees seem to be waiting, as if hanging in limbo as they hang over the ice of Wascana Lake in Regina, Saskatchewan.
The monochromatic variation of blue, from sky and cloud, to water and ice accentuates the textures of the landscape. Later in spring, when the grass begins to green and early flowers are blooming, such details tend to become lost in the summer riot of variety.
The text for this post was meant to end here, as I have other images from the lake to feature in upcoming posts, but I looked out the window and realized we have a spring flurry. The large heavy snowflakes are blowing in like the start of a storm. Perhaps I was counting my spring before it hatched (sigh).
Last autumn I was giddy with enthusiasm for trees. Their falling leaves do indeed clog the gutters and eaves troughs, but the work required to address this is such a small thing next to the beauty and benefits of trees.
As soon as the leaves had begun to fall in the streets in our area of the city, I was out with my camera. But as work would have it, I did not have time to post the images during their rightful season. The geese left for warmer climates, snow fell and winter took over. Now, as the geese begin to reappear from their winter spent south and the snow begins to melt, I’ve noticed ladybugs and the faint, sweet smell of composting vegetation. Spring!
The first glimpse of the world beneath the snow. This weekend was a marvelous, long-awaited gift of warmth. Of course, the forecast is calling for snow tonight, but there has been progress none-the-less:
I went to south hill, across the Souris River, to walk. The best places in Weyburn to visit for solitude have been invaded this year with heavy equipment, track hoes digging up for new developments. The peace and recalibration I had once been able to find in these places is not to be had. Of course, where I usually disturb the deer, there were none this morning.
Perhaps because I feel spring has been turned upside down–the renewal of the landscape is lost to “progress” and the quiet of a windy hillside is under siege of trucks and equipment–this image felt like the right metaphor for spring this year.
The fluid-filled bag brought to mind spring birthing on the farm, lambs and calves, placenta and amniotic fluid. I’ll let you decide for yourself about the plastic metaphor.
The day ended with a rain shower and some marvellous prairie skies. Even if I find snow again tomorrow morning, the drama of the skies will have been worth it:
I never want it to come to this, but here we are, at the end.
It’s the natural cycle. Try to accept it.
Full moon rising.
Next morning’s sunrise.
I saw it yesterday, the inevitability of change. I saw the future in the shrinking snow. The signs were there in the tendrils of melt water slipping down the concrete drive. This morning, watching the sun burn the underside of clouds, I saw a pair of coyotes jogging in the back way.
Yes, the solitary coyote had company. A few minutes later, the hare that lives in the field behind the house came bounding across the snowy creek bed, the movement of his black ear tips against the white snow the only thing to give him away (that will soon change). He was flushed by a third coyote not stopping to spare a glance at fleeing breakfast; coyote paused later, sniffed the air, and resumed pursuit of his own kind.
This is spring in the wild. Hunting, chasing, pairing, mating, and exposure of all things beneath that winter kept covered these past months.
I also saw this yesterday: pacing house wives. Restless women—followed by little children barely able to walk—stalking something unknown along the roads, sniffing the air. When the women met up with each other they stopped to exchange words, edgy and ill at ease, quickly pulling away from each other.
Later in the fall, when everyone has tallied their winter earnings and established ranks, they will be calm. These women will travel together in a pride of LuLuLemon-wearing, stroller pushing femmes au foyer that circle the neighbourhood. They parade to demonstrate the shifts in status, their new coalitions and hierarchies. They go out to emphasize who has been included. Who is not. And new Gucci sunglasses. There will be a return to pretenses of friendship, brittle alliances that are born of place. It takes no special skills of perception to see that they are not friendly now.
The decaying ice.
It’s nearly time. Break up. The men will be home in two or three weeks. This is likely the last shift on the oil rig for workers who have spent more of the winter away than at home. Valentine flowers hinted at it—those assertive messages of masculine return—but as the spent carnations hit the trash, an uncertain anticipation edges into the aura of my younger, female neighbours.
After more than a dozen years in oil towns, I’ve come to admit that my husband is right: spring is the worst season of the year. It is painful at the start, in these days of freeze and thaw. It throbs harder with the men’s return when the ground becomes too wet to move rigs and drill for oil. The neighbourhood will be flushed with a carnival of parties and spending sprees, departures and returns for vacations that can be embarked upon only if the taxes (due April 30th ) are deferred a while longer. It will be weeks of new toys, new trucks, new clothes, and booze. This is oil patch on a spring break-up bender. This is what natural selection looks like, the weeding out of who can make it in oil, and who cannot. What follows is the part that hurts the most.
Three weeks later the first bills arrive in the mail. There will be no pay cheque among the envelopes.
Trickling down.
Conflict. Arguments. They can erupt anywhere. Outside the school on a parent night. In the grocery store. On the street. Doors slam. When the ground heaves and settles with the freezing and thawing of spring, cracks show in the surface of all things that winter had covered. Melancholy sets in, and for some, this will be the trigger. Addiction, legal issues, divorce. Suicide.
I hate this time of year.
This kind of stress doesn’t define everyone here. Not all oil field workers come to their jobs with the burdens of hidden stresses nipping at them. Not everyone is broken by spring’s idle hours and lack of billable hours. I want to be clear about this.
I also want to say that for those who struggle, the pattern is not unique from one place to the next. I’ve seen these behaviours before, in other towns. It was like this in northern Alberta, in a city where we lived called Grande Prairie. I saw the same cycles in the central Alberta city of Red Deer, although we didn’t stay long. We moved through break up to the next job. It happens in the smaller places, too.
For my husband, who banks his holidays to use in spring because he hates working in the mud, there is no real down time to his work. I’ve always appreciated that we could connect to something other than the swing of a missing pay cheque in spring, to feel foremost the presence of nature in seasonal changes. This seemed important to teach our children, who have grown up in the oil field but who haven’t been defined by it.
Uncovered.
On the farm, spring meant simple things like prairie crocus blooming. Warmth meant tiny grey paws budding along a willow branch. The rich scent of compost in the soil. In town, especially in a rigging neighbourhood, this is the time of year when three-in-the-morning fighting punches at the darkness outside. Grievances among jealous friends rupture, and a man beats his garage door to death. Winter affairs creep out into the open.
Break up. Nearly bankrupt, broke. Breaking the land. (Mental break down.) Winter composting and decay. Homesteading metaphors mix with my emotions. Is this a journey about getting past the tangle of roots beneath, going below into something deeper? I suspect I should seek fertile soil, be creative.
Sharp edges, shrinking snow.
This will be our last oil patch break up. My husband will be retiring from field work this summer. Because this is the last year, I am going to pay attention, soak in the details. I’m not going to politely turn away.
With so much snow it will be months before the land is dry again. The municipal government is raising taxes city-wide this spring. It’s going to be a difficult season. It will be difficult to watch without flinching, without a flush of embarassment as a husband and wife beat each other with words, teaching their young children a vocabulary they cannot use at school. But I want to see if I can understand. And I want to write about it, with compassion.
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