Musing

(written & sent from the Super 8 Motel, Provost, Alberta; sent late due to service provider being down for maintenance again)

9C/49F, clear, stiff breeze blew as Gusta romped where stubble field meets industrial subdivision behind the motel; the motel parking lot awash in trucks that appear to spend most of their life off-road

it appears this is not a town, but a Municipal District, where the activities of town & surrounding area are merged – I wonder if that aids or detracts from a sense of community? maybe I’ll meet some locals & find out, though I expect our conference today is 100% out of town folk; it will be interesting to see

according to Statistics Canada: the municipal district has a population of 2,635 in 1,028 dwellings, a 2.6% decrease from 1996. On a surface of 3,622.49 km² it has a density of 0.7 inhabitants/km²

I think that means something more like lack of density

I’ll keep my eye open for those 0.7 persons

as I partook of continental breakfast in the motel lobby, the chatter of the cleaning staff over their cigarettes & coffee seemed focused more or less on the quality of vegetables harvested than anything else – that was a nice touch; part of the ambiance I suppose

my summer of visiting small communities continues; I’ve not been to this area in over 20 yrs.; I’d forgotten how spectacular some of the scenery is up hear where oilfields, mixed farming & geese flight paths converge in a , but coming through some country (Coronation, Veteran, Cosort & Czar) I’ve not seen before has already been more than worth the trip; it is a transition of moonscape-like scrub brush rolling grazing country in scattered pocket of high plateau the ice-age forgot to scrape away; a sparsely populated place where the train’s whistle echoes for many miles

last evening I dined on A&W fare, then began unloading the car in the lot behind the motel; I stood there behind the car as dusk was about to be extinguished; I looked west to see a hot ball burning through the haze on the edge of the horizon – then looked the other way to see a ball, just as red through the haze, rising in the east; it was as if two beacons were shining directly at each other with me in the middle – it was both a phenomenal sight & really weird feeling – I remember the song from Fiddler on the Roof ‘Sunrise, sunset’ …. This one was ‘moonrise, sunset’

why am I in Provost?

aside from the obvious, ‘why not?’, it is to attend a meeting of Area Governors for Toastmasters . . not sure if I will love the conference or not but I’ve loved the trip so far

Mark

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