North of Everywhere | Somewhere Between the Trees and the Sky

You don’t just go to my parents’ place. You arrive—heart first, lungs adjusting to air that still remembers what it was like before concrete and deadlines. Their house sits on the other side of the Meander River, like it’s deliberately keeping its distance from the rest of the community. Not out of pride. Not out of shame. Just… peace. Like even the land here knows some stories are better told quietly.

The road in is half-forgotten gravel, a ribcage of frost-heaved earth that rattles every bad decision right out of your bones. And then—just when you’re wondering if you missed the turn—you see it. The old steel bridge stretching across the Meander River like a stubborn old man who’s seen every flood, every ice breakup, and still refuses to move. The river below is slow this time of year, thick with silt and secrets, curling around the bend like it’s got nowhere better to be.

Mom’s house is exactly how I left it. Faded blue siding, a large wrap-around deck that creaks like it’s gossiping about who’s been gone too long. Smoke curls from the chimney—thin, graceful—and that smell hits you before you even kill the engine. Dry poplar and tamarack burning low, a scent that settles into your skin and refuses to leave, even after you’ve gone back to your city life and your artificially scented air.

Here, life doesn’t rush. It unfolds. Slowly. Deliberately. Like the kettle that takes its sweet time heating on the wood stove. Like Dad’s stories, told in that gravel-road voice of his, with long pauses that feel like whole chapters. Out here, no one’s refreshing their email or checking the clock. Hell, most of the clocks don’t even work right.

In the mornings, you stand out on the porch with a chipped mug full of scalding coffee and listen. Not for cars or sirens—but for the language of the land. The groan of the ice shelf shifting far downriver. The sharp cry of a raven overhead, its wings cutting clean lines through the low clouds. The way the wind moves through the poplar trees, soft and unhurried, like it’s got nothing to prove.

I don’t know if it’s the isolation or just the stubbornness of this place, but time behaves differently here. You feel it stretch out like a long shadow before sundown. You measure it in woodpiles and the slow melt of snow against the dark bark of spruce trees. You taste it in bannock fried up golden in Mom’s old cast-iron pan, served with Saskatoon berry jam that stains your fingers and makes you feel twelve years old again.

If you’re lucky enough to sit at their kitchen table—coffee ring stains on the vinyl, the faint tick of a battery-starved clock on the wall—you’ll understand. This isn’t just a house on the Rez. It’s a pocket of the world where the land still has a say, where people remember how to be without always having to do.

One day, maybe I’ll stop leaving at all. But for now, I’ll keep coming back to this place that smells like home and forgiveness, where the river moves slow and the coffee’s always strong enough to burn away whatever the city left behind.

And if you ever find yourself up this way, don’t just pass through. Sit. Listen. Breathe. Out here, even the silence feels like it’s got something important to say.

~smy