I don’t think we’re on the same page…

According to Wikipedia, the actual population range of a town varies from country to country, even from province to province here in Canada. For the US in general though, a town has a population of less than 10,000 people. I think it’s safe to say that when most people think small towns, they think of places that have less than 5000 people, perhaps around 3000 or 2000.

My home town? The last I heard, the population was about 300 people. So my idea of a small town is a good deal different than it is for other people.

Now it’s one thing to be small, it’s another to be consider by others to be “isolated”.

For example, the nearest town with at least a big a population is a 1/2 hour drive in any direction. The other handful of even smaller towns inside that 1/2 hour drive boast populations of about 50 people or so.

The terrain around my home town does not help either. It’s straddled on the edge of the tall grass prairies to the west and the woodlands to the east, which creates an ecosystem that is described locally as “bush” and “swamp”. It’s almost at the point where it’s too wet for the tall grass to grow, but not wet enough for good solid trees to take root. Combine this with a melting glacier from the last ice age that dumps thousands of tons of gravel and boulders the size of Buicks onto the landscape and you have a very poor location for planting grain. Instead, most of the local farmers raise cattle which require massive amounts of land to feed. There are also large tracts of land that are uninhabitable due to swamps that are there year round, not just when it floods in the spring. Less land to go around means less people overall.

At least my town has some stuff

My town, being the largest one in such a long drive, has quite a few things considering its small population. There’s a post office, a school, a hospital, a “hotel”/bar, a motor inn/restaurant, a hockey arena and a curling rink (this is Canada after all), a fire hall, a gas station, two grocery stores, a pharmacy, a cafe, two car repair shop, an Agricultural Office (aka the headquarters for the municipal government), a hall, and a liquor store/gift store/florist.

Mail isn’t delivered directly to anyone’s door. Instead, everyone has a P.O. box at the post office. Any mail addressed to a “street” address is simply put in the right box.

The school is for kids in Kindergarten to Grade 12 so I literally went to the same school for 13 years. The student population is about 400 kids in total…bigger than the entire town. This is because kids from the surrounding area are bused in every morning and for some, that ride takes almost an hour.

As you can see, there are no malls, no pizza delivery place, no clubs, no public transportation, and certainly no place to get a whipped mocha latte or whatever it is people drink. There is however lots of places to get plain old coffee.

For all you non-small towners

I know this probably all seems amazing to you. Like…what did I DO in my free time? How did I EVER live without Chinese takeout for the first 18 years of my life? How did I ever SURVIVE?!?!

To help everyone understand exactly what environment I grew up in and why I dislike cities to this day because of it, I’ll be posting a couple tidbits here and there on this blog of what it was like to be…

Just a small town girl.

You can cue the music now.

Perhaps it’s due to my poor memory but it’s a little tough for me to remember…well, remembering stuff. Weird, I know. >.> So, here’s a shot at it anyways.

Fried onions always reminds me of perogies, which in turn remind me of my baba. My baba (the Ukrainian word for grandma) had been born in the Ukraine and moved to Canada with my dido (grandpa) to start a family. Needless to say, she was a pro at cooking all sort of Ukrainian foods, most notably perogies. She always made the best I had ever tasted, including these special “flat” perogies for me which were basically just the circles of dough unfolded and unfilled, cooked just like regular boiled perogies. It was always a huge treat to go back home with a bag of those flat perogies to eat later. To this day, no one has been able to match her ability to make delicious Ukrainian food…and I still love me a huge plate full of perogies.

The smell of fresh rain brings me back home to my parents’ place, situated in the “suburbs” of my tiny hometown (as much as you could really have some suburbs in a town of 300 people). I’ve always had this fancination with water and used to play around in the puddles when it rained, walking around the yard and making little rivulets and streams to drain the water into the ditch. Very rarely does the rain ever smell fresh in the city…usually it smells more like rotting garbage. Disgusting (another reason why I hate the city).

Oranges and vanilla make me think of this novel I want to write, one that’s perpetually in the progress of actually being written. The main character remembers her mother only by the perfume she wore, which smelled of oranges and vanilla. One day I hope to actually own that perfume (because musky perfumes suck).

Freshly cut grass also reminds me of home, when my dad would spend a whole afternoon cutting the 2 acres of yard in the summer.

Cattails and swampy water brings back memories of Blacky splashing through the ditches, ponds, and drainage ditch as I’m biking on the road during our very regular bike rides.

Pine sap reminds me of the church my parents used to take me to as a child. I never much liked church itself but it was surrounded by large spruce trees that gave off their distinctive scent.

Bonfire smoke makes me remember cool summer nights spent around a firepit, cooking hotdogs on willow or metal sticks and sharing about a third of my meal with Blacky. There was much poking around at the embers and watching Blacky lay in the direction of the smoke without apparent irritation (I guess it’s better than getting eaten by mosquitoes?).

Dang, I’m just one short. Ah well, that’s all I can think of so I hope that everyone enjoys that little trip down memory lane.

I also don’t appreciate masses of people the way others do. They make me feel nervous and edgy, and god forbid I’m the center of attention. Want to see me turn beet red? Have a crowd focus their attention solely on me. I have no grand dreams to be a movie star or something similar. I value my privacy far too much.

On the other hand, my personality has shifted towards being much more social and outgoing than I previously was. Back in high school, I was painfully shy. Literally. Maybe the reason no one ever remembered my name was because no one remembers the wall flower, especially when she has two rather boisterous friends (they were still awesome friends though). University and college were no better. I made one or two friends in the entire 5 years and I didn’t keep in contact with them. And talking to guys? That was yet another way to get me to blush.

I’m not entirely certain where my personality turned around or even what caused it. Perhaps working in retail helped develop my backbone, made me bold. After all, it’s hard to stay completely shy when you have to yell over 30 10-year-olds. Maybe it was my roommate being downright stubborn about pulling me out of my shell. Or it could just be good old growing up.

Regardless, I can now do things I would have never thought possible before. Talking over Ventrilo with someone new? No problem, I greet them with a cheery hello. Years ago I would have died rather than talk to a stranger. As a matter of fact, in high school, my phone conversations with my friends would never go over 1/2 an hour. These days I can spend all day talking with someone I’ve never met in person, albeit it’s not a non-stop conversation. At least over Vent, I’m still a bit rusty over the phone.

In person I’m still somewhat shy but I don’t get flustered just from someone paying attention to me. When someone asks me what my interests are, I don’t answer with “stuff” and “things” anymore because I’m not as self-conscience about what I tell them. If we have similar interests, I can actually keep up a good conversation for a couple hours. Hell, I can even crack jokes without freaking out. I’m able to talk about myself in respect to deep meaningful topics without being paranoid that everyone will think I’m crazy. My shell is still there but it’s much thinner than it was before.

I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve but I’m not as terrified as I was before that I’m going to be hurt. Oh I still worry, wondering if everything will come crashing down on me if I say one wrong word or do one wrong thing. But I’ve also come to the realization that living safe all the time isn’t living. If I don’t take the chance of giving a little bit of myself in hopes that it might improve my life, I’ll go nowhere. If I get rejected, then oh well, that person probably wasn’t worth my time anyways.

Part of me is still the misanthrope, taking pleasure in being by myself, away from others. But more and more I’m realizing that there are people out there who do know where I’m coming from and can actually relate to me. In years past I felt as though I was my own race, the only one left (there’s teen angst for you). But curiousity prompted me to crawl out from under my rock and actually take a look around. I may still be different from the majority and unique in my own respects, but I am not alone. Not by a long shot.

*quietly sings “Que Sera Sera” as she wanders off*

Then there was that chilly night in February so many years ago. My friend Angele and I were waiting outside for our other friend Amanda (who had run off without us but that’s another story). It was cold, probably around -30 Celsius, and very crisp, so much so that the snow crunched beneath our boots. There was no wind to speak off and no animals, people, or vehicles to break the silence save ourselves.

I don’t remember exactly who saw it first and what it looked like when it began to creep up from the horizon. What I do remember is stepping away from the buildings to get out of the electric lights and standing in the middle of the driveway just staring upwards.

It was unlike anything I have ever seen before and have yet to see since. The Lights were a green that wasn’t bright or yellowish but still glowed vibrantly without a neon-like appearance. The entire northern half of the sky was filled with it. I could see the Lights move in waves and curls and spikes, the motions being sedated individually but together…it was as though the night sky had turned to a liquid filled with currents and eddies. There were too many shapes to pick out but I didn’t even try. It didn’t seem chaotic or busy in the least.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

It was peace. It was serenity. It was…the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I don’t think there are words in any language that could do its beauty justice.

It was almost an hour before it finally faded away and Amanda returned. An hour that we both stood there in complete awe of the Lights. A year wouldn’t have been long enough to gaze at it, never mind a mere hour.

With my awful memory, there’s a lot of things I forget. But the most precious things in my life always remain clear to me, and if I close my eyes I can see the Lights again wavering over me. So silent yet so close that if I could reach just a little higher than I could on my tiptoes, my fingertips would brush against it.

With life as it is, sometimes I wish I could just go back to the night and stand there forever. To let the silence and solitude seep into my bones and muscle and let the Lights hold my soul again.

That’s what I need right now…a little beauty in my life. Something to lift my gaze upward and give me something to reach for.