Fresh Narratives

Guest Blog by Karen Herriot

It has been such a treat to receive your buffalo postcard photos and reflections. Thank you to Karen Herriot for agreeing to share her photos, thoughts and this special poem. If you are new to our blog, you can read about the Buffalo Postcard Project here. It’s not too late to request a buffalo postcard, and remember, we hope to receive your photos and reflections by the end of June.

Sandhill cranes were calling overhead

Trudging up the hill with my ears bound against the howl

I am blocking out more than just the wind 

Carrying the spirit of the buffalo

Inked into the cardboard

Amidst all the history 

Mythologized mis-story

Truths untold or unheard

Narratives false and conniving

The ancient rock knows the truth 

Holds the stories solid 

The buds of the pasqueflower rise clean

New conversations beginning

Fresh narratives seen and heard 

My heart sings.

Karen writes:

I very much appreciated being asked to participate in this conversation.   

I held my buffalo, carried her with me on walks and finally walked up to the top of a hill, landing amongst the native prairie and the emerging crocuses.   The words came quickly so I wrote them down - perhaps they will re-form and be revised - perhaps not.   The process felt complete.   Like moving through yoga asana without direction, like the swaying of women in labour, the doodles of a pen while the mind wanders, humming while the spatula scrapes the batter bowl,  the swirl of colors mixed on a palette almost ready to meet the canvas.

Good enough for now.     Good enough for this moment.   Good.

I do not know what my granddaughter will see when she climbs this same hill and remembers me and how my ashes caught the wind.   I hope she notices the pasque-flower, that birds soar overhead, that the beaver busy themselves in the valley ponds and their ripples meet the dipping of the spotted sandpipers. My deepest hope is that she will have to strain to hear the singing and laughter of her children above the chorus of the frogs.

Karen, with her first grandchild, Charlotte Mae (now 5), who “I was privileged to see being born into the warm water of a birth pool in her bedroom. We adore each other and I carry her with me always.”

“Where will the frogs sing?” is the collaboration of two rural settler artists creatively responding to the beauty and destruction of remnants of land in the aspen parkland of Saskatchewan. Things we wonder about: what is our/your relationship to the land? What does society value? Why do these small remnants of land matter?

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