David Carpenter’s First Time

Saskatchewan writer David Carpenter’s story about his first trip to the Qu’Appelle Valley

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The very first thought I had, I remember driving there for the first time uhhh was single (*inaudible) was she said about time down there that, that as soon as I, I guess I was coming from Regina and, and descending from kind’a from the west uhhh and, and into the valley and there’s a very odd quality of light down there and hence probably because it was evening, but it felt I’m in a time warp. Uhhh I looked at the cottage and said these are not the kind of cottages you, you see in, in Canadian Home and Garden. These were very old fashioned cottages that evoked my boyhood and I, I, I guess that weird quality of light down there in the valley when you’re off the prairie suggested to me that, that I’ve entered a sort of a timeless realm. I know I’m dramatizing this, I’m self-dramatizing, but it’s a feeling I got from, from the uhhh, the uhhh, the, the amazing sort of corduroy hills around me. The, the shadows, the right way the fading sun would hit the lake and, and uhhh you couldn’t escape that, that, that feeling that you were entering a different dimension a different time dimension.