Out of my Comfort Zone and into The World

Across the farming land I see them. The high rises of my home town. Two concrete wheat silos standing tall above the mallee scrub. Their corrugated tin roofs reflecting the hot summer sun’s rays back up into the brilliant blue, cloudless sky, and I know I’m almost home.
Past the ‘Welcome’ sign the deserted main street is a familiarity. The football oval a silvery grey with bands of brown. The grass long dead after years of drought and the weeds now crusty from the early summer heat. The local hotel, the hub of our community, freshly painted but desolate. The farmers too busy with harvest to call in for a cold beer or a quite yarn.
Nothing has really changed, but it all seems slightly different. Perhaps I am seeing it with new eyes.
Once a town at the end of the line, many see it as a lost cause. A town without life, without heart, without hope, but I know its secret.
Before I know it we are out of town. Where I’d thought a puddle lay on the road, now only dry bitumen remains. The watery mirage from the 40 degree heat now dancing on the road 50 meters ahead.
As far as the eye can see, paddock after paddock of golden wheat line the road, their full heads swaying in the light summer breeze.
The blue bitumen turns to white gypsum and the white gypsum to red dirt. The type of dirt that burns your feet on a hot summer’s day. That’s fine enough to stick to your skin after a hard day’s work and the type of dirt that creates a layer of dust on EVERYTHING after a mid-season dust storm. I know I am home.
The shearing shed, the grain shed. The tractors and the trucks, all reminders of my childhood. Memories engrained in the sand, the sheds and the land these machines have worked.
Memories of racing through the pouring rain on bikes. Of sitting on Dad’s knee and steering the tractor and of resting in its wheel hub while sharing jam sandwiches under a shady tree in the middle of the vast open paddock.
The smell of freshly turned soil after rain and the sound of rain falling on the tin roof as I fell to sleep on stormy summer nights. Of waking up to stillness and calmness. The only noise that of birds chirping and dogs barking, marking the new day.
Getting out of the car, the still dry heat hits me. It has been 20 months since I was last home and only 30 hours since I left a snow dusted Calgary. It feels a long way from where I have come, but everything about this place remains alive within me. I know in my heart, this will always be my home.