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Canada - the land were folks still hitchhike, tiger lilies grow wild and
roadkill is extremely furry. Gardens were colorful, grass was green. In
California at this time, all the roadside plants are brown and dead except
star thistle, chickory and a few California poppies.
Chickory was the only familiar floral face on Ontarian freeways. Once
I got over my probably clinical compulsion to identify everything (it took
about a week of that - and I didn't even know what anything was) I
really began to enjoy the roadside flora. It did change a bit as we drove
from Toronto to Quebec City, but I was very impressed by how
many forbs there were and how many of them were flowering. It was very
very pretty. Coming back to California was a bit of a shock. You
get used to things being brown here - grasses are brown for most of
the year. It seems very normal - the golden hills dark-spotted with oaks are our signature vegetation! But, after being surrounded by so much green, all the death by the side of the road here at home suddenly had
me aching.
Driving back from Quebec City - bypassing Montreal to the
north - we would occasionally drive over the train tracks and get an
elevated view of nothing but trees for miles and miles. I was awed by how
far this landscape stretched. It made me aware of how much I depend on my
own sense of place. In the desert, even though I enjoyed knowing that
there was no one for miles and miles, I also realize that I needed to know
where I was. That the Great Basin was that way and Death
Valley was that way. That Quebec forest, with trees scrambling to grow
under other trees, a riot where each is ready to take another's place at a
moment's notice (to see this forest allows me to understand a little bit
about the genesis of logging practices on this continent), that forest, for
all I knew, went all the way up to the north pole. That forest had no
boundary for me. I did not know where it ended in any direction except to
the south. Even though I had a map and knew where I was in terms of roads
and towns, that inexorable forest made me feel lost. Did pioneers feel the
isolation imparted by a forest without known boundary?
***
All right, now I'm done being all Wallace Stegner on your asses. I got to
meet Gayla and see her really really nice porch, and my feeling from
reading her stuff on the boards that she must be a kickass cook was
confirmed. (She cooked us an awesome dinner. All the best meals on our
trip were home-cooked. Cuisine in Canada... well, let's just say I'm a
spoiled Californian. It took me three tries before I stopped ordering
salad, or even anything with salad, anywhere.)
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