I apologize to anyone who holds very dearly to Saskatchewan, to those who love it, or call it home. I enjoy Saskatchewan a lot myself, but I seem to enjoy it a great deal less when I have to drive anywhere in it for any length of time. Last month I found myself driving alone to Lumsden, Saskatchewan to help out at a camp for two weeks (those who have read some of my earlier blogs will have heard about some of my experiences there already).
What I wanted to share here, though, for all who would like to enjoy it, is something I drove past on my way to camp. As I was driving along, I passed a sign that read ‘point of interest’, indicating that this point was somewhere left of the highway, down a smaller country road. Naturally, I was a little intrigued, and and strained my eyes down this road to see this ‘point of interest’. In fact, this interesting place was so interesting to me that I took a picture of it as I drove by, which I share here for you to see.
Yes, for those confused, this is the ‘point of interest’. I’m not quite sure why or to whom this would at all be interesting, but remember, this is Saskatchewan. I suppose maybe for some, the sight of another green and yellow field would be very interesting – especially if they happened to have their eyes closed for the past seven hours of travel as they passed by field after field, just like it. Or perhaps it’s a ploy to make people think twice about the monotony of fields they see – to trick those who haven’t been paying attention into believing that this may just have been the first field they’ve seen in the hundreds of kilometers they have already travelled.
Whatever reason the sign has for being there, I think it is lost. But I don’t blame the sightless sign. Poor thing, facing the road the way it is, one can’t expect it to know the emptiness that it advertises. It may never have been turned around to see the view for itself. Perhaps it has never travelled in his life and hasn’t seen that by the time people reach it, they have had their fill of green flatness – they’ve had enough. Perhaps this little sign has been fed a lie. Lost and sightless as it is, it simply stands, like a blind prophet, trying to communicate with the busy stream of traffic that hurdles on by – alone, voiceless and misunderstood. I don’t blame the sign; I pity it.