@ the Helm

ghosts

This summer I took my fathers bike out to explore the country roads just east of my hometown of Lacombe, Alberta.

It is beautiful country. Expansive blue sky snuggled against gentle sloping fields of wheat, barley, and canola flowers. Gravel roads and long lines of trees neatly divide the farmland into sections that can easily cover six city blocks, probably more. Distances become hard to measure when you can see so far.

What I find to be the most compelling part of the landscape are the weathered markings of human passing. Overgrown roadways leading to abandoned homesteads and crumbling barns where no one has wandered in years, perhaps decades. Some of these places I approached, but mostly I kept my distance because I found the thought of disturbing them a little unnerving. Perhaps if I rode down one of those forgotten roads I would awaken something that would mistake me for another man from another time that they once knew.

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