Thursday

A tub of Saskatchewan water is waiting, steaming, for my flesh and bones.

The water in this area has a lot of minerals in it, often iron. When we came here this summer and the water hadn’t been run for many months, it was almost black and literally stunk from laying in the pipes and waterlines. Once they were flushed out, the water became normal again.

If the water around here is normal, that is. I always enjoyed staying in hotels in the city because the water was so clear, and I thought of that as clean. Now I know better, of course -- that the water there is so full of chlorine and crap that it’s probably suffocating skin cells as I lay in it.

After being here for four months, I don’t notice the water anymore. But the other day I got a whiff, and it took me right back to the summer days when we were here on vacation and being in this house was new to me. It’s the way water smelled when I was growing up -- the way water looked -- it had a reddish-brown tinge and an earthy smell.

Unfortunately the sparkles in the snow did not show up when I took this picture. It’s just where our driveway joins into the main driveway that goes over to the big house.