The Serial: Far From the Rowan Tree Day 16

Tonight, because of the fear in my heart for Ronald’s safety, I saw the cold unearthliness as well as the beauty. I felt very small and alone.

The silence was immense. The only sounds were the rattle of the Whiskey Jacks and the rat-tat-tat of the woodpeckers when he passed a clump of pines.

Eventually he came to the highway – a wide gravel road, its deep ruts stretching far into the distance.

At first he felt elated walking along it, sandy gravel showing through the rutted snow.

Soon, he thought, a truck or car will pass and give me a lift. But there was nothing – only snow and silence and the endless road going straight to the horizon.

The constant walking in bright glare began to affect his eyes (we had brought no sun glasses with us) and he had to walk with his gloved hands shading his face.

After a while his arms grew tired in that position. By the time the sun began to sink Ronald began to suffer from exhaustion.

The last few weeks of work had been tiring in themselves plus living at a much higher altitude than he was accustomed to had taken its toll.

Back home our farm, tucked into a fold in the hills, was no higher than 500 feet. lt took a while to get acclimatised to the change.

On top of it all was the long walk in the dazzling light.

Tunes of home

He kept his spirits up by whistling tunes of home into the empty air and thinking about the town beyond these snowfields.

He thought with longing about Red Deer with its proper houses, its selection of shops and most of all its people.

He would get talking to someone, surely, who would be able to help with advice if nothing else.

Eventually, however, sleep began to seem very attractive. He knew he must not give into this. In falling temperatures to sit down and close his eyes could prove fatal.

He trudged on in a sombulant state, hands mercifully released at last from having to constantly shade his eyes.

Now the wide earth had become a glorious shade of pink. He stopped for the hundredth time to look behind and listen.

Tired though he was he could not help but marvel at the enormous pink landscape taking its reflection from a spectacular red sky.

Was that a flurry of pink on the horizon? He couldn’t be sure. He was beginning to imagine things. Was this the Arctic equivalent of a mirage in the desert and was the noise he heard the throb throb throbbing of his exhausted heart?

The flurry of pink grew greater and the noise louder, becoming a low roar. A vehicle was approaching, fast now through a spume of pink snow – it didn’t appear to be slowing down.

Quickly Ronald came out of his sombulance and dramatically flagged it down, his long arms flailing the frozen air. They must see him. They must!

The truck skeetered to a halt. The window opened and the moon-shaped face of the driver appeared. “You going far? You sure look plum tuckered out.” That evening, several hours after darkness had fallen, Ronald still hadn’t come back. For a few minutes I turned my back on the warm shackful of high-spirited children with strict instructions to Richard to look after his brothers.

Howling coyotes

I opened the rickety door and stepped out into the night hurrying through the spruce trees to the top of the path.

A three-quarter moon was climbing up the enormous sky throwing over the silent wilderness a strange blue luminance.

To the north, at the rim of night, the sky appeared to be trembling where tentative rays of swaying light were stretching out, falling back, colour coming and going as it does in a rainbow – fading, fixing, fading, fixing.

Tonight, because of the fear in my heart for Ronald’s safety, I saw the cold unearthliness as well as the beauty. I felt very small and alone.

Even the burning brands of natural gas had lost all warmth and appeared as red-gold mythical birds escaping the earth.

In the distance I again heard the eerie howling of the coyotes although I now knew I had nothing to fear from them.

We had seen them in the daytime loping across the snow away from us until, curiosity getting the better of the little fear they had, they would stop to look back and ponder at our presence in their land.

To us they looked like pale Alsatian dogs. Tonight they were invisible – just a host of uncanny sounds.

I strained my ears to hear any other noise but there was nothing – just a vast lonely silence.

I trundled back down the path and stepped into the relative security of the shack. There was plenty of noise in the kitchen.

Michael and Ronnie were fighting over a toy car and Richard trying to keep the peace. Richard broke away from the other two and ran over to me.

“Did you see Daddy coming?” he said. “No, darling, perhaps he’ll be a wee while yet. Let’s have supper.”

Truck horn

Soon we were picnicking on the floor in comparative silence. Not long after we had finished and before I had time to clear up, we heard the unmistakable tooting of a truck horn.

Excitedly, we rushed to the small square window. Richard and Michael were just tall enough to see out of it. I took Ronnie in my arms so that he could see out too.

“It will be Daddy. It’s sure to be Daddy,” I said confidently. At first all we saw was the empty path patterned by moonlight and then a tall man hurrying down.

He looked different to the one we had waved goodbye to earlier in the day.

At first the boys didn’t recognise their father dressed as he was in a Canadian quilted jacket complete with fur-lined hood and large snow shoes on his feet.

He looked like someone coming home from an Arctic expedition. Ronald wasn’t alone. Behind him came a couple who looked of an age with ourselves and a small child.

I rushed to the door to scrape it open and let Ronald and the strangers in.

(More tomorrow.)