The Sky

I think what most people don't know is that one of the things that drew me back home to Manitoba is the sky. For something so vast, I find it very intimate. In all the places I've been, it's felt different; almost like it defines the mood that is set in each particular place. In Alberta, the sky is overwhelming in its simpleness. Everything about it seems unreachable, like you're looking at a painted canvass. It seems to just sit there, immovable and grand. It's also fickle, cloudy one moment and sunny the next or cloudy and cold and miserable in one town and sunny and warm and wonderful in another. When the rain clouds come in, they sweep the sky and sit above you half heartedly.
In Hawaii, the sky is too large like it's swollen too far in hopes of encompassing all of paradise. It is pastel and the clouds seem lazy as if the lack of importance emanating from the shores influences them. The horizons sparkle and blend into the ocean and the sunsets are understated and dull, perhaps only pale in comparison to it's surroundings. The rain comes in sheets from a seemingly empty sky because even the thunder seems to have trouble invading the stillness.
In British Columbia the sky is bountiful and full of freedom. The clouds swell and sit themselves comfortably over the mountains, sometimes white and peaceful,other times dark and forboding. The blue is too blue and the black too black but no matter how overwhelming, you feel strangely at ease as it encompasses you. The air is seemingly sweet and the rain is plentiful but hopeful. Life is evident in the sprawling coastal skies.
In Manitoba, the sky is so close you can almost touch it but so immense and full of life that you doubt you can. Everyday, the picture it paints is clearer, more brilliant and possibly full of more color. The clouds have many faces and the sun shows hope and possiblitly and growth. The prairies open up before it to enable us to see every aspect of the sunrise and set and it's my firm belief that making pictures in the clouds was invented in a sky like Manitobas. When the rain comes in, the thunder and dark clouds rumble omniously like a train down a track and the blackness furls in like smoke with a light show. A Manitoba sky is peaceful and powerful and stunning and is what draws me back even if I don't realize it.