Spring Time Near the Rockies. March 28th 2024

    If you're going to live out here in this corner of my home and native land,  you need several abilities to get you through, well, life.   Firstly you need to be able to disregard age old proverbs others need to live by.   Take for example that old adage " The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."   Yup.  That's a proverb to live by that we disregard this time of year every year.    Spring hasn't sprung.  And it may not for another month.  In fact, a snow storm in May is never out of the question.   Yet, every year by now we start talking golf, swimming,  hiking the mountains, dirt biking, motor biking, construction, gardening.  Like we will magically be amid warm sunny weather on March 21st.  

     And the second thing?  Hope.  We never ever seem to give up hope.  And as often as not, we do it wearing blinders.  It is hard to figure, this place.  We take great pride in our toughness, yet we are so absolutely emotional about..... well just about everything.   In a country that has seen snow in every month of the year, we are always surprised "Hell, Shocked!" the end of march when we get a snow storm.  We see our petroleum based economy tank on the whim of Arabs, or Americans, or any OPEC country and can't believe it happened to us.   But as soon as the sun shines or a barrel of oil climbs, we forget about everything.  We never seem to loose hope that the future will bring spring in spring time, or that the oil will always stay high and be in demand.  Hope perpetuates.  

     I know all about hope.  I am a Riders, Vikings, Oilers, Red Sox, Broncos fan.   And as crazy as it is, I believe with all my heart one of those teams will prevail. ( Every single season) sigh.  My investments are worth about the same now as there were in 2005.  Yet I continue to believe this up on Monday, down on Friday never ending trend will improve.  There are recipes I simply cannot master regardless of how many groceries I have wasted.  You may well be reading the ramblings of a truly insane person.  

    But even a crazy man such as I has some sort of standard:  I will never drink Scotch and Coke.  I will never put ketchup on a steak.  I won't play Yoko Ono's greatest hits on my stereo,  and I will never buy a bible from Donald Trump.  

     Tomorrow is Good Friday.   That means that Sunday is Easter Sunday.   The day young women adorn their new spring bonnet.  They put on their new spring dress.  The day you soak up the sunshine on the patio in the afternoon.  In reality,  I will be turning on the infloor heating system in my basement in an hour or so.  I am about to go shovel the sidewalk.  The streets are slushy under the new fallen snow, and the cars are filthy.  

     Spring here just right of the Rockies is a two day event that often doesn't show up till June.  From now till then,  we will have the odd brilliant day that will instantly erase the memory of  today, yesterday, last month.  Only to cause great shock when it rages the following day.   It sounds like the frozen over version of Hell, doesn't it?   Yet this corner of my home and native land is the fastest growing part of this country and is ranked among the fastest growing areas in the world.   And there is, I suppose, a reason for that.  

     For one,  there is employment.   Most of which comes from the harvesting of resources, renewable, and non renewable.  There is wealth.  More than many from other parts of Canada have ever seen.  More than those born and reared here realize.  Living here, working several jobs at minimum wage, housed with multi families in a one family dwelling is the gold at the end of the rainbow for many many people new to our country.  

     For those of us who grew up here?  Well I remember a couple of things of what the "artificial" spring was to a kid.   It was marble season.  Marbles became the introduction to games of chance,  competition,  and even the first venture into the world of  entrepreneurial exploits.  In the 60's in school yards in Alberta, Marbles were a currency.   As snow banks melted and waters began to flow,  you found yourself a stick, or a root, or a straw and you raced them down the flowing gutters from the church at the top of the hill to the storm drain in front of my best friends house.   When you know nothing else,  such is spring.  That time of year between frozen tundra and the mud bowl that constituted residence amid a rain forrest.  Funny thing is,  in our sheltered removed world,  we assumed spring was exactly the same everywhere.  It was just life.  

  I guess you could say that when you spend spring time near the Rockies?  Ignorance is bliss.