Do you ever catch yourself talking to your stuffed animals? Do you coo at your plants as you water them? I remember being seventeen and sneaking downstairs early in the morning, just so I could read my diary entries to our pet budgie, Cleo. I know that Cleo would never really be able to respond or help in a constructive manner. But, there was something relaxing about confiding in him. When Cleo passed away, I was heartbroken to have lost my confidant. I always wished I could’ve told him how grateful I was for those quiet, whispered mornings. I liked being able to share myself.

Slowly, I realized that I don’t have to tell anyone anything about myself or my life. I could keep them secret within myself, like a treasure trove of chocolate buried at the back of drawers for a rainy day. It was a truly liberating feeling for an awkward, immigrant teenager who just realized she likes girls, also.

Lately, I’ve realized that I don’t have to secret away anything. I can tell the trees and the rivers and the lakes and the mountains. Lately, I’ve realized that I have been telling the trees and the rivers and the lakes and the mountains my secrets since my first trip to Banff. Lately, I’ve realized that I still haven’t expressed my gratitude. So here it is.

It has been a very long time since I confided in you.

On my near-weekly drive down Highway 21, I like to imagine that I’ll be able to see the outline of the mountains in just a half hour. Sometimes, as I drive past a swampy part of Alberta, I follow the sunlight glistening off of the water and imagine it bigger and expansive; I imagine the ocean stretching out. Late at night, as I drive home, the dark of the trees rise beside me like tall, black walls. In the darkness, I can make out the foggy peaks of mountains towering above me. I see the blinking light out in the distance and follow it with the road, hugging the curves as tightly as I hold you. I see the farm animals grazing on the wide, open fields and I can feel myself soaring above them, across the meadow, over that hill, towards that cottage by the river.

On these near-weekly drives up and down Highway 21, I think of you and realize that you are already here. There are these red-brown barns, some standing proudly new, others dilapidated. And as they glide into sight and whiz away, I recall all the back-of-the-car conversations with my cousins, pointing out remote houses and barns, claiming them to be our own.

Do you know that soon, I’ll have a barn of my very own? It’s no cottage by the river, but as we both know, there’s a decade between me and that cottage. No, it’s no cottage, but it is a place of my own. A Room of One’s Own, like that piece written by Virginia Woolf. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” she said. I wonder if this room of my own would allow me to finally do that?

Till the next near-weekly drive up and down Highway 21,

h.