Rocky Mountain High.

It doesn't happen often here but lately I can't help it.  I feel restless, like a prairie wind through the grass, whipping this way and that, gaining speed, momentum, over the flattened land. I find I long for cerulean skies and golden fields and the long straight black strip of road that connects it all. My foot aches for the accelerator and endless miles, my hair to be whipped back, my skin to be touched by sun I haven't seen in days. A warmth that is generated not just from above but also radiated from the fertile soil beneath. I miss home. A prairie girl at heart and always I have done a decent job of appreciating what I've got (which is so much) and trying to let go of the past (which can be so rich). There are just days, muscle memory and migration, when my joints move to draw me home. This cold, grey, city where people have to compete, tooth and nail, for each spec of land, for each dollar earned, for every job, for every spot on the bus or in traffic. It is understandable with this that people here don't make friends easily, don't trust, smile at others, extend a hand, move out of the way for others. People don't say please or thank you. It is understandable when I can imagine each individual is just that, someone who is in perpetual competition, everyone has to be out for themselves. I try to break this habit, smile at strangers, hold doors, thank people, I try to give a little so people might be reminded what that feels like. But that's where I come from. I am so incredibly fortunate to come from the province of plenty, where jobs are abundant, gas is cheap, homes affordable, roads are wide, the city is built for escape instead of containment. Somedays it just gets to me. Somedays when the city is too aloof and the pull of wheat fields, foot hills, and rocky mountains gets too strong. Well, those are days like today.