Pop 89: Curious Friends

By Madonna Hamel

The biggest adjustment is the adjustment to people. I hear myself say that as I enter the Regina Airport parking lot. I’ve spent so much time alone on the prairie that when the Park reopens, I’m surprised to see people walking down Railway Ave. or hear voices in the campground behind my home, murmuring to each other around their evening meal under the stars. The voices I am most familiar with are those of birds, rambunctious coyotes, and grumbling clouds, so people make me perk up and take note.

I count the number of spaces at the terminal so that when I return weeks later, I won’t forget where I parked. I park wherever in Val Marie, knowing my vehicle will be exactly where I left it when I return, just like the 1940s old red work truck parked at a jaunty angle outside my back gate. Half-loaded with pruned branches, it’s as if the Town Man began a chore but suddenly saw something more pressing and left it there, forgetting to come back to finish the job. It’s been sitting there for two weeks now, as if posing, providing a photo-op for campers who love the timeless aesthetic or an old truck in front of a vibrant sunset.

Inside the terminal, I gape at the many shapes, colours and sizes of humanity. Seeing these faces and hearing these voices energizes me. I catch snippets of conversation and random smiles. I’m early for my flight to Toronto, having packed and planned my wardrobe the night before. Every time I know I have a long drive ahead of me, I recall the days how, as children, we slept in our clothes the night before leaving The Pulp and Paper Capital of the World for The Okanagan, the land of sun, sage and sand. It was an unnecessary but exciting ritual that mom instituted to get us up and out the door and on the road. (Only to subdue us with Gravol til we got there!)

This time, I don’t take Gravol, but I do allow myself a local Rebellion beer. And, as usually happens when I’m in an airport lounge and too jittery to eat, I get sentimental. I journal about my love of humanity; I call my sister to tell her I love her and thank her for taking the calls from my brother, who continues to soldier through various “events” related to his stroke. Our words now dwell on being thankful for what we have, being cognizant of our oh-too-humanness and wondering how we can all get together again soon.

This trip to Toronto is to be with Avril, our family’s adopted sister and one of my oldest pals, someone I’ve known for forty-five years since our early days working at Cinecenta, the university cinema in Victoria, B.C. We met at the Marx Brothers Festival and when we both showed up wearing false noses with furry moustaches and eyebrows, it was love at first sight. Since then, she’s been through a marriage and divorce and remarried, received a Russian degree, went on to work in film, was part of the team that won the Oscar for The Shape of Water and got her forensics degree. 

She loves critters and once lived on a farm in Sweden, where she met her present husband. Today they live in the heart of Toronto, where I’m writing at this moment. A few years ago, she came to Val Marie and fell in love with Grasslands National Park. And when I pointed to the lot across the road from me, noting that it was for sale, she bought it that afternoon and now has a second home in my village. Whenever she gets a break from the crazy world of film, she flees to Toad Hall, the name of her Saskatchewan home.

But this year, we decided it was time for me to come to her. I needed to take a break from my own worried mind, my constant concern for my brother, my obsessive research on the subjects of brains and miracles. Avril offered to fly me here, and tomorrow, we will drive down to Illinois to witness the cicada emergence. I know nothing about this natural phenomenon except that the last time it occurred was in 1803. ( My generation seems to be obsessed with catching these once-in-a-lifetime events - be it solar flares, eclipses or brooding cicadas getting together to make some noise.)

At the moment,  I’m reading that two converging cicada broods will be the “worst” ever, according to my internet source. “Worst” being a matter of opinion, especially if bugs and creepy crawlies are not your thing. For people like Avril and all the young women and men I know living in Val Marie working for the Park, “worst” translates as “what luck!”. I’m just happy to tag along. I’m curious.

Besides standing by me through my own tumultuous trials and errors, including six relationships and five geographical cures, Avril has shoved me out of my poor-me slumps with wacky new schemes like: getting our black belts in karate, (we made it to orange), dying our hair purple, trying to outrun police officers on our bikes, writing a screenplay in Sweden, swimming with manta rays in Antigua, and various other ventures I’ve either forgotten or am blocking out. Point being, she does her best to flip the fear coin so that it sits face-up on the curiosity side. This is why we are still friends. Because we still default into “a wild surmise,” we still prefer to run with wonder, to be open to the healing gifts of nature in all her disguises. And that includes human animals. Walking down The Danforth last night, we stopped to talk to pet owners and admire gardens. I realized how much I needed this - to be surrounded by my fellow humans, buoyed up by small talk, laughter, and their voices murmuring into the night.