I grew up on a mixed cattle grain farm in Southern Saskatchewan. And when I say southern, I mean one mile north of the Montana/Saskatchewan border. My childhood was spent outdoors exploring the yard, fields, pastures and the many bale stacks my dad had in the yard. We climbed and ran on the bales in the spring, summer, fall and winter. I remember hauling our crazy carpets out to my dad bales on the north side of the yard because the snow drifts went right up to the top of the stack, and it made an easy toboggan hill for us to sled down, if we could find a way to climb up. I also have fond memories of my cousins visiting (usually at Christmas time or Easter time), and our favourite thing to do was to head out to the bale stack, see if we could climb up, and then racing across the rows of bales to see how fast we could run.
Fast forward 30 years, I have children of my own, and my parents still live on the farm, and there are still stacks of bales. This past long weekend my family was gathered at my parents farm, and one evening we all ended up on my dads bale stack playing like we were kids again. The kids were thrilled to be up on the bales, running, and jumping, testing their limits. The best part though, was probably for us as adults. We were reliving our inner child. There was so much laughter as our husbands attempted flips and jumps off the bales in the hard snow drifts (note: no adults were seriously injured). The kids laughter and joy on their faces were illuminated as we let our guards down, and just played for enjoyment. I mean there were a few moments where the littles fell through the snow and we scrambled to grab them, but we had the best time out there. And the bonus to our evening was the beautiful Saskatchewan Sunset that we got to witness.
This is a reminder that your adventures don’t have to be planned, or expensive. Sometimes all the beauty we need can be found right in our backyard.
~Adventure Mom aka Dani~