Maybe it’s an age thing. That’s what I thought when it first occurred to me.
I can remember year after year of noting when things happen first in a season — the first time in spring when I note the liquid burble of a robin’s song, the first staccato rap of a yellow-shafted flicker proving its wood-pecking prowess on some high, hard surface, the first snow in late fall, that point in August where the greens shed vibrant and suddenly wash into dun.
When flowers open: when they set seed and let those seeds go on their way. The first small and eager trout that rises to my dry fly on a first spring day on a new brook.
But somewhere this year, there’s been a subtle shift — and I wasn’t sure whether it was a change in attitude or an innate recognition that things are finite.
Last week, I was walking downtown in the early morning cold, the wind low but the temperature around 0 degrees C. There had been rain overnight, steady swallows of it gurgling down through the downspout, and the morning air had that particular freshness of the after-rain.
The patterns in the silt and dust and mud had been reset overnight by the flow of water across them, but only briefly: by seven am, the clean slate had already been overwritten by feet and bike tires, a sign that whatever I might think an early morning might be, there are others out even earlier.
The sun was still low in the east, but doing its level best to bring spring to Saskatoon, enough warmth that the grass was starting to turn, when I realized all at once that we were closing in on the last mornings of regular cold.
The cold where you wear a jacket when you head out in the morning, and then end up with it dangling at the end of your arm, clenched in one hand, by the time you’re head home again. The cold that doesn’t want let go, even when you wish it would.
Of course, nothing is certain: there will be temperature outliers over the next few weeks, but the regular coldwater splash of fresh air in your face as you go out the door in the morning has wound down for another year.
But.
But suddenly, I was thinking about the fact that I was noticing the last of things, not the first of things. That I was looking backwards, instead of forwards — and that I have been doing exactly that for weeks. I’m at an age where things occasionally feel like doors are closing. I stopped as I walked and stood there, wondering if perhaps there is a place in life where your outlook changes to a backlook instead. Because it was, I realized, happening a lot.
I’ve been busy. We’re preparing to move to a new city and, for me, a new job. I know that consciously, but also forget that it worms around through my subconscious. Leslie was the one who pointed it out when I talked about noticing some many lasts of things all of a sudden: that maybe I’m looking at the last time I do things because I am, in a way, already bookmarking our departure. Moving ahead and away has me firmly caught looking back in the rearview.
There are many things to miss. There’s all of Saskatoon and Saskatchewan that I have left to learn about and now may not, and all the things I’ve managed to absorb over two years. Dear friends here who won’t be a walk away in a new town. New friends in the writing world here that I was just finding.
The South Saskatchewan River. Enough said.
I know the FreshCo clerks at the grocery store up the block, and they also know me.
I know the noises the house makes tucking itself in at night, the thunks and clicks that, if you pay careful enough attention have a definite location, if not an absolute pattern. The dobro guitar, upright in its stand, which sounds a fugitive note some nights when the temperature falls just enough — resonating in just exactly the way a resonator is meant to speak its mind.
The noble quiet of the dining room, now exactly the way it is meant to be, just in time to be disassembled again.
The old archduke of neighbourhood cats, an orange-brown tom with a high backend and a way of strolling slowly across the boulevarded street that makes cars stop, deferentially, until he deigns to finish crossing, has returned for another year. Long may he reign.
Spring arrived this week like someone threw a switch. Sunday, the furnace had an issue, and I had to call for a warranty repair as the house cooled. Wednesday, it was 26 degrees C, and the furnace has entered its seasons-backwards summer hibernation.
As I thought it might be, the sharpslap cold morning was apparently one of the last of its kind for the season. It’s a way of looking at things that I hope doesn’t last.
I tell myself I will do my level best to enjoy every first that Winnipeg offers me: I think I still have to roll with plenty of Saskatoon lasts along the way.
I will miss your writing about my city and Province. Often your articles have helped me see things I never appreciated or reminded me of things that I do.
Another wow for me in your writing Russell. So pragmatic and poetic rolled up in prose! Glad to see you nominated for Sask Book Awards🤗