Unappreciated Beauty

Today, my mother and myself drove to a small town about 150km away in order to pick up the beef that we ordered from my cousin, who happens to raise grass-fed, organic beef, and fairly close to home. I consider myself fortunate.

Now, before I go on, I will say, yes. I eat meat. I get that question a lot, actually. Apparently, if I am a natural health practitioner, there is some sort of prerequisite that I must be a vegetarian. That is not the case. Honestly, my health and personality go south when I don't eat meat, and while I do believe that many people can subsist on a vegetarian diet, I am not one of them. I don't believe a person has to be meat-free in order to be living ethically anyhow. With the availability of local farmers raising grass-fed, humanely raised meat, I think there is hope for those of us out there who simply can't thrive on an exclusively plant-based diet. On a spiritual note, I am usually conscious to thank the spirit of the animal that sacrificed it's life for my food. Yes, life is a circle, but I still thank it for its place in that circle. More on that another time, though.

So, my Mother and I were driving to go and pick up the beef, and I began to pepper her with questions...so many questions. Information about her childhood, her and my Dad's early courtship, their early years of marriage, anything she knew about my Dad's childhood, and pretty much any other interesting facts that I happened to be curious about. In our conversational travels, we meandered around the topic of the farmland that my Dad's family had owned in southeastern Alberta years ago.

I loved that land. I spent a lot of my childhood out there. We had a horse named 'Fancy' (don't blame me, I didn't name her), and there were dogs, cows, chickens, pigs, and sometimes turkeys (maybe the dumbest creatures EVER...). There were two farmhouses on the land, the very small 2 bedroom house that my grandparents lived in and the larger 3 bedroom farmhouse that my Uncle, Aunt Sue and two cousins lived in. I was born many years after my older siblings, and in their youth, my uncle actually was married to a different woman (Barbara) and had three other children, all of whom were grown when I came along. Really, it's not as complicated as it seems. Sue was his second wife, and he had two boys with her.

When my dad was growing up, my grandparents lived in the larger farmhouse (with 5 kids! Probably not large enough!), and later built the small house for my uncle and his new bride Barbara to live in.

Well, my grandparents have both passed on now, as has my uncle. My dad is the only brother left in his family. My grandmother passed away when I was six, and for years after, my uncle and grandfather continued to farm the land until the nineties when Big Oil wanted theirs.

There was oil on that land, and an oil company came in to make my grandfather an offer. By this point, my grandfather's health was fading (he was 85), and he was thinking of selling, but he never wanted to sell to THEM. He knew what that meant for the land. The land he had put so much into. It meant it would be destroyed. The derricks would go in, and not only would it be the end of the land, but it would likely never recover. You see, when oil is drilled, the land loses all of it's water and minerals at the same time. The land becomes virtual desert. Trees are the only hope of keeping any topsoil or moisture, but the soil is so depleted that even hardy, indigenous trees can't survive.

My grandfather gave a firm 'no', which is when the oil companies began to play hardball. They brought in arbitrators, made threats, harassed, superceded and stonewalled any other offers, and there was even some questionable property damage that occured during that time, leading my grandfather to believe he was being bullied.

Grandpa began to lose steam, and my uncle wasn't of much help, mainly because the land wasn't in his name, making him rather powerless in the face of these companies. In the end, my grandfather sold, moved into a senior citizen's lodge in Castor, Alberta, while my uncle moved his family to a small farm outside of Brooks.

My grandfather died four years later, still regretting the sale, and finding it too painful to look at pictures of the homestead he had built and raised 5 children on with his wife.

My uncle passed away in 2004 (his funeral was on my birthday) after complications with his lungs. My uncle, an avid smoker, had developed emphysema, and when he was out in the field one day, he collapsed, and by the time the ambulance arrived, he was gone. His sons were 18 and 16.

We drove past the turnoff to the farm on the way to Forestburg, and my mother and I had a little moment of silence. So many memories on that land, that now is nothing but turned up gravel and sand.

We drove through southeastern Alberta, which ultimately, as a result of extensive oil-drilling, has become Canadian desert. According to my mother, many farmers in the area are going under because their crops simply cannot survive the hot, dry summers and cold, dry winters. My cousins, now grown, are farming free-range beef, and are fortunate to have wonderful friends, family and neighbours who buy from them, partly because they are reasonably priced and do a great job, and partly as a little memorial to their father and their grandfather who taught them everything they know.

As we drove through that Canadian desert, dirt kicking up behind us in the middle of October, I realized something.

There is beauty even here.

Thank you for the memories, Ivan, Sue, Grandma and Grandpa. I love you.