Remembering hay

A couple of days ago, I returned from a road trip to Alberta, with its mountains, foothills, wheatlands and badlands. Since then I've had some persistent pictures in my head.

The prairie sky, for instance, with constantly changing cloud formations moving across the wide horizon. The whisper of the grass as it blows in the prairie wind. The black-and-white magpies on the road, picking tidbits dropped by trucks hauling grain, saucily waiting till the last minute to raise lazy wings to avoid the oncoming car. Shadows stealing across the golden ripe wheat that waves beneath alternating bands of blue sky and thick gray cloud.

And hay. The roll-shaped bales are as tall as a man, and weigh seventeen hundred pounds, nearly an imperial ton. Winter fodder for animals when the prairie is covered by blowing snow.

"I see just the one swather," says a farmer in the coffee shop. It's 6:30 am and several men in caps and plaid shirts are discussing a neighbour who is haying.

"Yeah, they're only using the one," says another. Long pause.

"We never talked to him last night, so I don't know if he baled on Saturday or not. It was too wet on Friday. Wonder if it's gonna rain."

"It's raining in Medicine Hat." Another long pause. "We're lucky it hasn't froze yet. If it clears off..."

These leisurely voices, discussing the weather and the crops, were the sound track of my early childhood, and the memories are stored deep in my bones.