Author: Jacqui Mignault

Advent led us there. Christmas opened a door. And now we are here, sliding into a New Year. Again. The bustle of 2019’s ending is over. The buzz of buying, gifting, making, cooking, gathering and celebrating is mostly passed. The decorations are being packed away. Where I live in the shadow of the Rockies, there’s a settling into January. The sky seems greyer. The slushy roads a bit grittier. And the early nightfall isn’t lit by magic and twinkly lights. In January, it’s just dark.

I walk regularly in a provincial park nestled in the middle of Calgary. About a year ago I came to a wide space in a familiar valley and saw tall metal fences, keeping us out of what once was a field of tall prairie grasses. Soon, big diggers and trucks came down the hill and started to work. Every week the hole in the ground got wider and deeper. The displaced earth was made into a new mountain. Enormous cement pipe fittings were trucked in and piled into pyramids. Huge machines buzzed and rumbled constantly.