Taken. Granted.

"There's no way this winter's ever going to end if this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. He's gotta be stopped. And I've got to stop him."
Groundhog Day

Despite it now being spring, five inches of snow fell last night here in Calgary. Trudging home last night in eddies of huge swirling snowflakes and looking out over the lumpen, white landscape this morning while masticating my oatmeal, I realised that I had not taken a photo for months. Calgary has lost its charm for me, has become quotidian, is now so commonplace as to become invisible.

I have gathered my worldly possessions into four piles: Take, Package, Donate, Trash. Small, useful things will come with me. Large, not-very-useful things will get packed into a single big box. Crap that wouldn't look right in the garbage will be donated. Crap that was just sitting around is gone, baby, gone.
It's interesting to do this again. It's not so much like spring cleaning as it is like that 1000-year-old building in China which is torn down and rebuilt every year. It remains unchanged, yet is constantly re-crafted.

I guess I'm nervous about leaving homestead-ishness to embark on frontier-ishness. I don't experience these feelings first-hand, but sort of arrive at them by guesswork and elimination. "Well, my stomach feels strange. I didn't eat any unusual twigs or berries, so it must be psychological." "I'm dizzy and nauseous. Either I'm pregnant or there's something else going on." "I can't seem to feel my leg anymore. Gosh, will you look at that. Cannonball took it clean off."
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