I head west again. I’m trying out a different route today, walking south of the airport rather than north. I leave the house and startle a pair of mourning doves in the alley. A bold robin issues a challenge. In a sunny corner, ostrich ferns are poking out of a planting of juniper. There are signs of gardening everywhere, a side-effect of the pandemic. A passing driver smiles at me. Near the pedestrian bridge, I say hello to our neighbours, Brian and Judy. A cyclist is waiting at the other end of the bridge for me to finish crossing. I continue walking south. Thick drifts of elm seeds lie beside the curb. The sound of hammering echoes from both sides of the street; the pandemic is a time to renovate. A girl wearing a red bikini pulls the cord to start a lawn mower. In the playing field behind Lakeview School, little kids are playing a game together, cheered on by one supervising adult. Is this one of the few daycares still operating during the pandemic?
In the front yard of a house, someone has built a small dirt track for mountain bikes; there are banked curves and moguls. I hear more hammering; an addition is being built onto the back of this house. A Bobcat waits silently in the backyard. Across the street, a leaf blower cuts through the quiet. A dog barks. I turn a corner and walk down an alley. A family cycles past. Two yellow warblers fly between the garages. A wheelie bin has been bandaged with gaffer tape. A plastic fence is broken, and a ruffled crow perches on a telephone line. A lawn is covered in dandelions; their seed heads are white in the sun. I walk past a fence, which smells like stained pine. Next door, I notice a curious homemade trailer, built around an upturned rowboat, as if someone had been inspired by the Peggotty house in David Copperfield. It has a flat tire. A man who smells like hand sanitizer walks past.
I’m crossing at an intersection when I’m almost hit by a jeep; its driver isn’t paying any attention. He sneers, as if I’m to blame for his carelessness. A grey partridge scuttles across a lawn. A flock of grackles scolds a crow. Down the street, a pink pool noodle has been wrapped around the trunk of an ash tree on the boulevard. The sidewalk ends, and I start walking on the edge of the road, past empty playing fields and beach volleyball courts at the Rugby Club. Next to Lewvan Drive, a meadowlark is singing.
It was calm earlier this morning, but now the wind is stronger and I’m walking right into it. Billboards, perhaps damaged by the strong winds, speak gibberish: “Now selling the final PhD.” Unifor members are picketing outside the big Co-op supermarket, and I stop to chat with one of them. I ask how long the lockout has been going on: six months. “I’ll never shop there again,” I say. “It’s no longer a cooperative,” the picketer replies. “It’s just another corporation.” I wish him good luck, and keep walking. A rabbit runs across the road, dodging traffic; in a vacant lot, it examines a stack of plastic sewer pipes and then hops away. Unconvincing plastic boulders have been placed in front of a new apartment building. A black pickup speeds past and makes a careless left turn. The sidewalk ends and I turn to walk down Campbell Street, a gravel road at the western edge of the Harbour Landing development. On the horizon, a red semi glides silently along the Regina Bypass. I walk past a farm. The road has been sprayed with oil here, to cut down on the dust from passing vehicles; there is a strong smell of tar. A rooster crows. The fields next to the road look like they haven’t yet been planted; are they about to be developed? A barn swallow flies low across the road. One of the native sage species—artemisia ludoviciana—is growing in the ditch. Gophers whistle and a killdeer cries. Birds sing in the windbreak around the farm; I smell lilacs but don’t see any.
The road makes a hard left turn to skirt the south side of the airport. A city worker is sleeping in her idling truck. A meadowlark flutes beyond the airport fence. A tiny plane lifts into the air. I stop to look at a roadside memorial shrine: a stone cross; plastic flowers, animals, and birds; a beer glass; and one boot. I taste the dust raised by passing trucks. To the north, past the airport, a train sounds its horn: a long line of containers, heading west. At Courtney Street, the road is marked as Hill Avenue. The airport ends. The city ends. To the south, Courtney Street becomes a dirt road; a sign informs me that it’s “impassable when wet.” That’s not really a concern this dry spring. The fields on either side of the road have been seeded. There’s a farm ahead, and I hear an angry dog barking. Is it tied up? I hope so. Signs at the end of the driveway warn passersby to beware of the dog, but now it has fallen silent. Shrubs in the shelterbelt around the old farmhouse are in bloom; I look at their pink and white blossoms and wonder what they are.
I’m getting closer to the Regina Bypass. I see the bridge over the highway that I’ve crossed so many times. The Westerra development is on the northern horizon. I see a sign marking the old Center Road; before the Bypass was constructed, this was the corner where I would turn towards the village of Pense, 25 kilometres west. A meadowlark is singing nearby. Beyond the Bypass, I can see the big white Loblaw’s warehouse at the Global Transportation Hub. I pause to drink some water. Over the rushing wind, I can hear trucks on the highway. To the north, an eastbound train is hauling potash.
I cross the Bypass and trudge west. I can see stacks of containers in the Canadian Pacific Intermodal Yard. A pile of ashes lies beside the road. I turn north at Range Road 2210—otherwise known as Fleming Road—another dirt road that would turn to mud when it rains. This place is grimly unattractive; the fallow fields on either side of the road are the same colour as the dirt road I’m walking on. A dusty robin hops around. “tânisi, pihpihicêw,” I say. At the intermodal yard, I can see two large forklifts—they’re called “container handlers,” according to Google—jockeying containers around. A truck honks its horn, and the forklifts beep loudly as they carry their burdens from one place to another. They are tall and ungainly looking machines; they lift the containers from the top, using a giant claw. The constant beeping noises must drive their operators crazy. Without gantries, the Canadian Pacific Intermodal Yard looks temporary, even fly-by-night; there probably isn’t enough traffic here to justify the expense of building gantries. Containers are stacked three-high in a long line beside the railway tracks. There is a line of empty flatcars on a siding. A fence at the end of the road deters but doesn’t block access to the yard; I could easily walk around it, cross the tracks, and wander into the yard. A sign on the fence warns of video surveillance. I sit on a concrete barrier dropped in the road to deter drivers from getting too close to the yard and eat the apple I’ve brought. A red-winged blackbird trills and I hear another meadowlark. One of the forklifts drops a container onto a truck trailer with a screeching noise. I wonder what’s in those containers, whether they are full or empty, coming or going. There’s no way to tell from here. Trucks are picking up loads, then driving off. I try to record the sound of the yard, but it’s too windy, and I end up with nothing but a low rumbling noise. The forklifts move to a different part of the yard, and it becomes surprisingly quiet; the sound of the machinery blends in with the wind and the birds. The sun is warm. It’s peaceful.
Then the forklifts move back closer to me, and the spell is broken. I drink more water, then turn to retrace my steps. My legs are stiff after my rest, as always. I notice wells for testing ground water. Discarded bottles of coloured dye suggest there’s been some kind of Easter egg party here. To the south, traffic is moving silently on Highway 1. I turn east. The only sounds are the wind and my feet on the gravel road. I can see the city on the horizon, with the Bypass in the foreground. A raven hovers on the wind. Two pairs of mourning doves fly up from the ditch, their wings squeaking, followed by a pair of grey partridges. I walk across the overpass. A police car speeds past, lights flashing and siren screaming. I hear another meadowlark. A flock of red-winged blackbirds is singing in an overgrown dugout. There are so many of them; every slough and dugout has its own population. I surprise a pair of ducks, which splash into the air. I cross the Canadian Pacific tracks. A towmotor is grumbling in the yard at Brandt Industries. I pick up a quartz crystal from the shoulder—discarded, perhaps, because its medicinal powers were exaggerated. An abandoned shoe lies next to the road. A plastic bag in a dry slough moves in the wind like a wounded bird.
