April Storms

My knuckles are tired.

For four hours, I gripped my steering wheel as an unexpected snowstorm battered the highway on a recent road trip.

Usually, my prairie landscapes are beautiful. The horizon stretches until all you see is a hazy line of blue and green curving in the distance, and I’m sure I see – not just know – that the world is round.

But when the snow descends and the wind arrives, the pair are relentless. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, headlights are a necessity. Even when the snow stops, the gales recycles the drifts, blowing them across the road like wisps of memories. Whirling them up to confront you in fury.

In the ocean of white, I could only see the road ahead of me for a couple of meters. And, sometimes even that disappeared. So, I relied on the grey volkswagon in front of me which appeared and reappeared in the hazy clouds ahead.

It’s frightening to drive with no sense of direction … I had to physically restrain myself from stopping. But, even if the snow didn’t erase all remembrance of shoulders on the road, I knew someone was following me, the way I followed the volkswagon. I dared not stop.

I kept the foot to the pedal on faith. Hoping that the car ahead of me knew where it was going and that we were all being led to the same place. Trying to ignore the abandoned vehicles in the ditches on the side of the road, knowing they had likely relied on faith too.

Sometimes, for half a minute, the winds would stop and all was calm. I could see ahead for kilometers. And, then the eerie realization dawned on me. It wasn’t just me, the volkswagon ahead, and the car behind trying to make our way --- but a whole caravan of travellers, filling the roads as unseen companions.

Then the winds came back and all was white again.

Spring blizzards.

By the end, I feel it’s my landscape that has been scourged by the storm.

In those tense moments, I apologized for all the injuries I incurred. I forgave all the hurts that came my way. And all I have left is love and gratitude for … this.

Storms are good for that.
But, I’m still exhausted.