July 5, 2011

• Oil Rigs

  On the way home from church on Sunday we followed a huge truck with some unknown piece of metal Something towering on the back of it.  I was looking forward to getting to the road we live on and turning off, leaving the gigantic moving edifice to continue on its cumbersome way.  But as we neared Range Road 134 I saw the tell-tale “Rig Move in Progress” sign and my heart sank.  Mr. Driver of The Huge Truck put on his blinker and turned on to what used to be our sweet country road.  Worse still, he then made a right turn into our barley field.

  I  had known it was coming for the last year, but am still unprepared.  This is now one of the things I see from my kitchen window.

  

  I always feel sad and sorry when I see a farmer’s field being overtaken by the little city that grows around an oil well.  It used to be everyone else that I felt sorry for.  And now I’m feeling a little sorry for me.

  Dan is so wise.  He reminds me over and over that this is what makes our part of the country what it is.  The oil industry is what makes Alberta the richest province in Canada right now.  Dan saws lumber for the pipelines and because he does we have the funds to give-and travel-and buy a new vehicle when our mini-van crashed.  We have been blessed  because we hardly felt the economic crunch that many parts of Canada and the US have gone through in the last years.

  (The oil industry also pays us well for damage to crops.  Dan as the farmer/renter of the barley field has that income coming.  There is also a good sum for the oil well going in on this land. My dad still owns it so that money belongs to him.  Here in Canada the revenues are a little different than they are in the states for having an oil well, because technically the farmer owns only the topsoil and not all that’s underneath it.  But we are well reimbursed and not complaining.)

  When I get too anti-change Dan says, “Well, are you ready to stop driving and heating the house and traveling?”  (Because it’s the gas and oil that makes it possible for all of us to do those things.)  And I’m not.

  But STILL.  I chafe.  I dream.  I dream of friendly little communities without the fast pace and expense of a community with money  to burn.  I remember the days of going to our little country post office for the mail and chatting with the neighbors.  Today the post office/convenience store combination is abuzz with trucks in its huge parking lot. And people wearing the blue and yellow coveralls of the oil patch worker buy hotdogs to go.

  Thankfully the canola fields are in bloom and I can see beyond the oil rig city to untouched farms.  And one of these days I might just saddle up our horse and park the suburban.  I might chop wood for the winter fire.  But wait.  The horse frightens me when I try to bridle her.  And I am a lousy wood chopper.

  

  And the sky is still blue.  And it’s July.

  

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  Alec was washing dishes the other night and he & I were laughing at the scene outside the window. Liesl was running pell-mell down the hill with her doll and stroller. Minutes later, the doll was lying in a pink heap in the garden, deserted stroller lying beside it. “A young and inexperienced mother,” said Alec.

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  Andre & Natalia somehow got into this thing of chanting “God is Jesus and Jesus is God.” Considering the truth of the Trinity, they aren’t so far off. Andre was doing his chant the other day and at the end he added, “And they’re all mixed up togedder.”

   

  • 11:18 am
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