Claustrophobic in big sky country

I have to admit I had to try really hard to like Alberta. I loved the flight between Calgary and Grande Prairie. I sat on the westward side of the Dash 8 just as the golden sunset was laying down over the distant peaks of British Columbia. Below me the black and white contrasts of snow among birchwoods and frozen rivers created so many flowing pictures it was like cloud gazing into an amber and charcoal canvas. From 20,000ft up the black roads ran up and around remote homesteads to make a landscape full of giant tadpoles. Rivers meander wildly with layer after layer of oxbox lakes on each bend. All still frozen, the lines seem to be the doodles of a dreamy artist, languorously sketching the outlines of  a sheep, a hand, a rabbit, a bear in white chalk on a blackboard formed of dense woodland. In some areas of clearfelling, the snow and tree contrast created perfect chessboards and in others, the crisscross of forest roads between points mapped a picture like old astral charts. Maybe Santa Claus uses these to navigate. I landed quite dreamily in Grande Prairie.

But Alberta was a tough contrast from Alaska. Nevermind switching between Uganda and Homer, both equally captivating, though wildly different, Alberta on the ground felt at first like I just tied an anchor round my soul. I'm used to boundaries, corners and edges; land sloping off to rivers, lakes and coast, some curious new neuk to explore. As we drove the skies were blue blue blue, no break to the infinity land or skyward. I took a snapshot out the car window, it is 50% white, 50% blue. The endless prairie flatness was at first, actually claustrophobic to my mind which was twitching to get out of the sameness of it all.

But we rolled down to Peace River at Dunvegan and my heart lifted. The river is wide, very wide, and meandering and frozen into buckling slabs of ice and wind polished mirrors. The town landed me again though. First impressions were of depression. The largest stores were the liquidations sales warehouse and the liquor outlet. Signage is old with many places for rent. Banks and pay day loans centres were prevalent, with a thoroughly depressing looking bridal shop between them. White nylon dresses hung ill fittingly on faded mannequins in a unlit shop window decorated with plastic vines turned UV yellow. The side of the windowless liquor store had what would be a 'back of the club' entrance only it faced onto main street, with a sign that read: "rooms for rent, ask at the liquor store". I suspect rents were hourly.

I went into the salvation army thrift shop, usually always fun. There was nothing in it I think would have made it onto the shelves of our gentrified charity shops and vintage stores. Electronics I would think long considered defunct were sitting on dusty shelves. No CDs or DVDs for sale, only a few children or biblical videos and a stack of cassette tapes. Definitely no 'last season', 'bought it but never wore it', 'decided I didn't like the colour' £200 suits in here.

I wandered through the mall, full of cheap bargain basement clothes and dollar stores and empty. The whole town felt empty. I took photo of the 'friends and lovers' dating shop, now up for rent, and situated next to the health food shop which was full of crystal healing rocks and had a flashing neon signs intriguingly advertising 'full body vibration'. Even the skill hill is called Misery Mountain.

At the post office and coffee shop I browsed posters, desperately trying to find evidence that there was more to this town than first impressions and found no events advertised until May and many adverts for activities in September, one of which, ironically for a town called Peace River, was a huge Gun show, though that took place in September 2009. Christmas decorations were still up but not turned on. Every turn gave me the sense that the large retail park sitting above the village of 6500 had killed the centre and the region is waiting for the thaw - seasonal and financial - before kicking into life.

I wondered if the place is in its betwixt season. The snow and ice too rotten to enjoy, spring not yet bringing back green shoots, birds and the river currents. The still blue skies only gave the town a whistling silence rather than a sense of peace. I stood on the levee where Heart River flows into Peace River and saw the tubular steel handrail vibrating wildly in the complete calm. I can only assume it was the pressure of ice against the inside bank and the waters struggling beneath it to find their way to the sea. Deriving from Great Slave Lake, this is a historic and wonderful heritage river for Canada. I went for a run along its banks and high up out of the river valley to see the wide meanders and islands and where Smoky River joins it. It was spectacular, of a scale comparable to the source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. It was very, very easy to imagine the passage of riverboats and canoes along this important highway for the Mackenzie era fur traders and Hudson Bay Pioneers.

I'd been thinking of circles and things coming around again a lot lately. Partly because I've been finishing a fascinating biography of a wonderful lady who brought Tai Chi to the UK. As I browse round the $2 museum I read the journey of Mackenzie to the sea, coast to coast through Canada and was startled as it concluded in Bella Coola, British Columbia. I had forgotten that I had been to the rock he had inscribed for the crown almost 200 days after the very day in August 1993. I felt happy to have connected to another section of the extraordinary journeys that were made in these times by Peary, Franklin, Rae, Froshiber and so on. I could see that in another time, another season, and also for the native communities, this would be a very fine place to be, a place of practical and spiritual significance. Easy walking, grasslands fulls of birds and game, a huge river running slow across the continent wide enough for large riverboats, endless birchwoods to build from and make fires with. There was an interpretative sign next to the river describing a boring looking alder bush. Wrong! The bark is antiseptic, the berries pressed with fat and meat into pemmican, fibres used for ropes. You just have to know I guess. Landscapes tell all sorts of stories depending on who's seeing them.

Being here is a bit like holding a mirror up to my own culture and I am also reminded to think, 'oh this is what happened to them' all those distant relative from the generations back who left Scotland to map out and trade and built and conquer and discover, survive, prosper and rename a continent. There are other communities still here that speak only German, or French, or Ukrainian and the museum has a traveling exhibit just now honouring Chop-Suey, the influence of Chinese and their restaurants in rural Alberta. Guess Alberta wasn't so flat after all!