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Saturday, June 9, 2012

Getting Back to The Country

Hey everyone!  I am Dave, you can call me Dave.  I am currently a geological engineer.  I would say that I have a good mix of urban and rural Saskatchewan background.  I do live in the city now, but spent most of my life living on an acreage.  In that way I got to live the rural lifestyle, while still interacting with city life as well.  Some adventures I like to take are getting away from the city, to explore rural areas.

My most recent rural adventure took me up north to Larocque Lake.  It is a pristine lake north of Missinipe (which is north of La Ronge).  This lake has only one property, which is owned by the grandparents of some good friends.  And the lake is only accessible by float plane (or portaging, if you have time)!  The property is maintained as a fly-in fishing camp.  Last summer the area was hit by a forest fire.  Luckily the cabin survived, but most everything else at the site was destroyed.  We went up to clean-up and re-build.  This included felling trees, building a new boat house and  outhouse, fixing docks, and general site maintenance.  It was very busy, but at the same time very enjoyable.

We lived at an entirely different pace up there.  Up with the sun with a slow start to the day.  Some of the guys would fish for an hour; I would sit on the dock and have a coffee.  After breakfast we would get to work.  And work would continue pretty much until sundown (with the occasional break for beer and snacks).  We would generally eat supper around 10 pm.  Then we would have a few drinks and relax until bed time after midnight.

The days were long and tiring, but they were stress free too.  To me, that is the feeling that I get, thinking about rural Saskatchewan.  Sure, long hard days can occur anywhere, but in a rural environment there are so few distractions to cause stress.  No traffic to worry about, no schedules to adhere to, no crowds to get caught in, no status to update, and no supercomputer to make your coffee.  You move along at whatever pace works for you, and you make things happen with your own hands.

It can be a fun experience getting away from a "google" society too.  There was one evening after supper when we were trying to figure out the definition of a word (or something like that).  Normally anyone could pull out a smartphone and boom, they have an answer.  But here we actually had to rely on our own knowledge, and the knowledge of the group to figure it out.

It was pretty hard to get on the plane that last morning to come home.  Of course there is stuff from the urban world which I love and wouldn't want to live without, but I will always enjoy getting away from it all.

3 comments:

  1. love those full days of work. Also, eating after a strenuous day of work is pretty phenom.

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  2. Ugh, I know what you mean about getting away from all the urban stress/ridiculousness. I wish (not really) that we still had a Season where people lived in the city half the year and in the country for the other half. Bliss.

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  3. I also kind of wish there was a day in the year where no one (except maybe taxis and ambulances) were allowed to use vehicles, so everyone would just walk around everywhere (or maybe bike) at a leisurely pace. Then again, while I'm picturing a peaceful holiday, I'm sure that that's actually an apocalyptic hell-holiday to some.

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