DRIVING BACK FROM Kamloops on the Paul Lake road, you rise up out of a twisting little valley onto a great stretch of tableland called Skidan Flats. It’s a sagebush meadow, free range land where horses are sent to graze the summer grasses. On the north side of the road, there’s always a herd of cattle, long-horned and lazy. Above the humped shapes of mountain that ring the road is the incredible azure bowl of the sky. Whether we’re returning from a trip out of town or just our usual shopping and supplies jaunt, the view always astounds us.
I can’t understand how people can speed through here. Deb and I tend to dawdle, and it irritates the drivers racing through at 120 clicks. But whisking through that stretch seems like cheating yourself. We always get a thrill as we top that rise. The light can dazzle you with its moods and shadings. The sky is so huge and perfect from that vantage point you feel you could be launched into it at any second.
When I was a foster kid in Kenora, Ontario, I spent a lot of time alone. The other kids in my neighbourhood had regular families, but I never knew from one week to the next whether I’d be staying or be sent off somewhere else. Other kids intuit that kind of desperation, and they steer clear of it. It didn’t help that I was the only Indian kid in the neighbourhood, or that northern Ontario in the early 1960s was very small-minded. I got used to wandering around by myself, and the truth was I liked it that way.
Deep in the bush, about twenty minutes from where I lived, I discovered a table rock. It was a slab of pink granite that jutted out of moss and blueberry cover into a clearing. The rock was rutted some by the weather, but it was mostly flat, and it had a slight angle that made it easy to lie back on. With the sun pulsing down and the heat of it radiating against your back, that rock was a great place to stretch out. Nobody else knew about the rock, it seemed, and it became my own private refuge.
Lying on that table rock for hours at a time, I was introduced to the wonders of the sky. Gazing up into the heavens, I felt as though I was levitating, free of gravity. Sometimes I’d bundle moss under my head. Other times I rolled my jacket or sweater into a pillow. When you stare at the sky long enough, you come to feel that you’re a part of it. As a foster kid who never fit in anywhere, I treasured that feeling.
So I surrendered myself to the sky. I’d tell myself there were pirate ships in the clouds skimming past high above, great bears or carousels or the fiery exhalations of a dragon. Sometimes, when a wispy cloud appeared, I’d hold my arms up in front of my face and blow sharply on my wrists. Then, keeping my eye on that small cloud, I ’d rub my wrists together, making a counter clockwise circle. I’d concentrate, and eventually that little cloud would vanish right before my eyes. I always laughed when that happened. I felt like the world’s greatest magician.
I knew it was really just the wind. I was cognizant of the everyday science all around me. But for that brief moment I slipped free of rules and knowledge and accepted belief. I allowed myself to believe I truly had magical powers.
I was often scared after I left northern Ontario for my adopted home in the south. I’d lost my table rock, but I still had the sky. Whenever things were bad or confusing or hurtful, I could always find a place to stretch out, gaze upward and feel the sky fill me. Even as I got older, that always helped me hold on.
I’m a grown man now, living in a grownup world that’s short on every day magic. There are bills to pay, chores to be done, problems to be solved. But when I take the time to wander out and find a quiet place in the sunshine, I can still make clouds disappear. I can still free myself from rules and the accepted order of things. And whenever we crest that hill and drive onto the tableland of Skidan Flats, I remember the sky’s promise to me. We all have that magic within us. Look up. Look up.