to boldly go where we've not gone before

One of the delights of living in a city is the almost constant opportunity for exploration. There are streets to see and cafe's to try. There are new foods to taste in the areas where immigrants settle and new people to meet that will be refreshing to your spirit. There are new quirky stores to search through and streets to walk down and sights to see.

Living where we live now, in a field in Alberta, means that the opportunity to explore is given to us times three. Our field is located in the middle of a triangle made up of three smaller Alberta cities and we've done some exploring in two of them. Today we hit the third. An underrated berg called Ponoka.

It was fun again, to go exploring. The town, the real town, is off the major highway and you have to go looking a bit for the beauty, but it's there. Tall leafy trees covering the streets. The houses, some 30, 40 or 50 years old in those streets, and they lead right into the downtown which reflected the older community too. No brand new, sparkling buildings to show the wealth of the place. No buildings made up to look quaint, they just really were, quaint. The people we met were much the same, real people without the air of lots of cash. Regular people who kept their fences painted, their lawns mowed and their leaves raked. People who loved where they lived and who wanted to belong to something gracious.

We found stores and cafes, bakery and meat shops. Bookstores with new and used books, Chinese restaurants serving lunch buffets, even an English Pub with the quirkiness of having no English lagers or bitters or beers of any sort. And we found it all within walking distance. To us, that is the prize of prizes, to be able to walk to your shops and appointments and church. For us that defines a close community whether it's in a city or country town. If you can make your way through life without having to start up an engine and drive someplace. That's just about being committed to the patch of land you are a part of, and really being a part of it.

We found a shop that sold used items and took the cash and used it to buy bibles for different parts of the world. What an idea. It made shopping there fun, and paying more than the register rang up was a new opportunity for us to give. We found a couple of good quality chairs for surprisingly affordable prices.

Those days are fun, like charting new courses, discovering new territories, finding the searched for thing or discovering gold, it's just a treat.


And now you best hold on for the ride, because this Autumn is going to get a little bumpy crazy as we ride towards December.


Night from the Field.