FTLComm - Tisdale - June 6, 2000

A video camera is really a rather blurry eye to look at the world but it does offer some interesting perspective. This morning as I drove back from the field where the alfafla is being harvested I came upon this scene and wanted to share it with you. This location would be about three miles East of the town and is slightly higher in elevation than the site for Tisdale. The picture below is a composite image made up of seven pictures and a quick look at it reveals almost nothing. That is precisely the point, in a land as flat as this the features and affects of humans on what is, seems to be so minimal. The vastness of the open sky and the monotony of the seemingly endless great central plains are amplified with perspective. Now upon closer inspection the image below, albiet very small blips on the horizon, all of the features of the town are present. The Harvest valley terminal is in the left forground then the aging and now abandoned UUG elevator, the last wooden elevator in Tisdale, In the midst of some trees is Tisdale's water tower, the looming McKay tower apartment building and beyond the town the Tisdale alfalfa dehydration plant. The rest of the settlement, its trees, houses and businesses are just over the crest of the fields, between this point and the town. There is a certain overwhelming humility that comes to a person when you view a really big mountain, it is the realisation at ones own insignificance. I suspect that the people of the prairies are subtly always aware of their own place in the scheme of things and without the buildings of a city and the rush of traffic that demands complete and total attention, there is a level of serenity that makes life more understandable and reduces the insignificance of each human act proportionately.