Alone with the Wheat Outside Viking

Photo: Ripe wheat stands golden in the fields north of Viking.

My last day in Viking has been eventful. In the morning, at the United Church service, I sang familiar hymns and learned the history of John Wesley and the Methodists, as well as that of the United Church of Canada and the one in Viking.

Though I attended the United Church with my mother as a child, and though her childhood church in St. John's, Newfoundland was called Wesley Church, most of what I learned today was new.

After the service, we had coffee and I talked to some women who asked me if I'd seen the Museum. "I was born in the museum," said one, chuckling. Another chimed in, "Me too." When the third woman said she too had been born there, I finally clued in.

"Er, did it used to be the hospital?" I asked, and they laughed.

After lunch I picked up longtime Viking residents Earl and Deny. Our first stop was the Viking cemetery. There we noticed the grave of a woman born in 1831. Since we thought the area had not been settled by then, we wondered how she might have come to be buried here. Her grieving husband had interred her, but did not lie beside her.

Then we went out to look at the Ribstones. These large stones, carved long ago by Aboriginal people, were associated with the spirit of the buffalo. They stand on a rise that commands a magnificent view in all directions. We spoke to a woman from Hobbema, who was there with two friends. She likes to visit the ribstones every year.

Earl and Deny also showed me some beautiful gardens. I learned that Viking has an excellent record of wins with Communities in Bloom -- not only provincially, but nationally and internationally as well.

After tea at the home of my new friends, it was time to bid them adieu. Not yet ready to return to my room at the Viking Lamplighter Motel, I drove north on 36, watching the passing fields of peas, canola, and golden ripe wheat lit by the late afternoon sun. I stopped at a crossroads to get out of the car for a closer look and to smell and feel the prairie wind.

The solitude was soothing. There was only me and the wheat. The flat horizon stretched in all directions. I remembered playing ball as a child on the prairie and looking down at the spring crocuses, then up at the immense sky; it was a similar feeling.

When I climbed back into the car for the solitary drive back I found I was no longer alone. A mosquito had got in with me. I opened the window wide and it flew out as I flew along the sunlit road. The horizon was empty of all but fields of crops. An occasional pickup passed on the road.

Then after a small rise and a grove of trees, the elevators and water tower of Viking reappeared. I parked the car and took a final walk out past the golf course to the edge of the prairie and back around the town. Tomorrow I'll be on the road early, heading for home.