The Prairies, in all their glory - July 7

I'd tried to dismiss what everyone had told me about the monotony of the drive across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. "Just burn straight through" they'd said. "Nothing worth stopping for". But I'd said no, I want to experience the open space, the rolling wheat fields and all that. And it has been a lovely drive so far. But only that: a drive.

The motto on Saskatchewan's license plates is "Living Sky" and I'd wondered what it meant. Not "Big Sky" mind, which is what I'd always thought of when I thought of the prairies but "Living Sky". And then I figured out what it meant. I left Saskatoon today in a steady drizzle that had persisted all through the night, kept me so awake in fact that I'd been up at 6:30 and on the road by 9am, a far cry from my usual leisurely starts. In the course of a day and just over 700kms I saw the drizzle gradually lift, turn to mist and eventually, a veritable terrain of clouds. And because of the distance that can be seen over the vast, uninterrupted flatness of the prairies, I was able to see something from the road I'd previously only seen from airplanes: the illusion of the movement of the clouds as I made my way along the highway. Just like the effect of passing at right angles, rows and rows of crops in a field, I saw the varied layers of clouds appear to move as I passed them, made possible only by the distance at which I saw them. I saw how the changing light and changing weather made the view ever-changing and I understood how that sky that hung over the prairies like a ceiling really was alive.