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Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Festival Calendar

Seasons have their rhythms everywhere and the Quarter is no different. Its inhabitants have their own ways of marking those cycles, events whose origins are sometimes obscure but which are unimaginable outside of certain times on the calendar. Just as winter warms to spring which unfurls into summer, so the spring socials turn to sports days and fairs. One could travel from town to town across the full deceptive breadth of the Quarter taking in the festivities until harvest begins. Autumn brings turkey suppers and harvest dances, while winter is an interminable time whose dark hours are measured out in card games and curling bonspiels.  

All of these celebrations, in one form or another, can be found in towns and villages across the greater western plains. There are others that are unique to the Quarter, like the First Drop in spring. When the ground is finally warm enough for seeding to begin, farmers across the Quarter will empty a bottle of rye on a chosen field for luck and good harvest. In some places this is a solitary, almost furtive exercise, in others a field is chosen and the whole community turns out for the ceremony, which is concluded with a potluck in the community hall. 

Another is the Fallow Ground, typically in October, although some communities wait until after the first snow stays. Always it is after harvest. Families and sometimes whole communities will gather at a field that has been shorn of its crop and there they will bury human figures made of bread or cake to restore the land. These figures are often marked with some representation of a deceased relative, an acknowledgement of the cycle of life and death in which everyone is engaged. In some cases, a sin-eater is present and one of the bread figures will be given to them, along with a glass of rye or beer, to consume. These individuals are scorned members of the community at all other times of the year, but on this one day it is for them to take the burden of everyone’s sins upon them to ensure next year’s harvest.

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Old Horizons

The truck sat forgotten in among the trees of the shelter belt that had once surrounded a farm yard. It was a late arrival, having been left sometime after the house had been moved, the foundation dug up and the concrete recycled. The quonset and bins had been moved as well, while the corrals were torn down and the laneways plowed under, so that the land could be returned to crop. Someone had decided they couldn’t bear to take down the three rows of trees that encircled the old yard and at some point the truck had been left with them by parties unknown. 

Wheat grew on one side of the trees and lentils on the other. Both were the latest drought resistant varieties, necessary because after a wet spring, June had turned brutally hot and that had continued on through July. The sixth year in a row of drought with no end in sight. Yet the crops showed no signs of suffering from the heat. It wasn’t just the new varieties, though that was a large part of it. The fields, like so many others in those parts, were also covered in solar panels, standing tall above the crops, adjusting their angle to the sun, providing shade to keep the little moisture that was left in the soil from evaporating away.  

The gravel road that ran in front of the fields was still in good condition, though it was empty now more often than not. Most of the farm sites that had populated the road as it wound its way north from the highway had also been turned back to crop land, the result of consolidation that always followed the arrival of more efficient equipment and techniques. First it had been tractors replacing horses, then decade after decade of larger and more precise equipment, enabling more bountiful harvests even in the face of continuous drought. The few people left now farmed vast sections of land, but with the depopulation brought on by their own consolidation they had moved to be nearer to town, which itself was shrinking. Some had even moved farther away, there being little need to stay close at hand. 

Automated drones handled most of the day to day work in the fields now, making daily passes to measure and record everything. They were nimble enough to be able to target herbicide directly onto any weeds that grew up and could even target pesticides as well. Seeding and harvest was largely automated as well, with fields well mapped. The work there was in transporting the equipment to the field. Once it was there and set up they needed only to keep an eye on operations on their phone. 

The drones paid no mind to the truck or the trees surrounding it. They were not part of the field and were therefore irrelevant. If the truck had been left there as a message it was one that was ignored. But they were not the intended recipient. There were still margins, however narrow and restricted, where the old ways still persisted, for whoever might be looking for those spaces. And there was always someone who was, driven by romantic, possibly foolish, ideas who would spot an old truck sitting useless among some trees and would lose themselves out in the deep parts of the Quarter chasing some forgotten horizon. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Rusted Edge of Things

The alkali slough was a shimmer of white on the horizon as they crested the hill, almost lost in amidst the faded green of the surrounding sea of grass. A well-worn trail led to it, following old cow paths and picking its way through the knolls and dells. They had been along it enough now that the path they followed was becoming dangerously visible. The grass was worn where the tires passed over it. Another year and the ground would be bare, if they were lucky enough to still be coming then. 

They had left the yard before dawn, as usual, so that there would be no trail of dust visible to mark their passage. Without lights in the darkness they couldn’t travel fast, but the road, once gravel but long since reduced to dirt, didn’t allow for speed anyway. It was washed out and overgrown, though the locals used it to avoid the highway where you had to pay tolls for safe conduct. No one existing out here could afford that, just as the Magnus and his Spartan Hordes and what passed for their government couldn’t afford to extend their suzerainty beyond the highway.  

There was nothing of worth out here anyway, at least nothing the Magnus and his followers saw as worthy. A few people trying to scrabble together an existence in among the remnants of the old ways, most of whom would be forced to give up and move on once it became clear there was no water to squeeze from these stones.  

No water in general. They could almost count on their hands the number of days they’d had rain or snow in the past year when they’d first come to these parts. The ground was cracking in places, weed strewn where once there had been planted fields. When the wind howled the dust swallowed the sky. The pastures had done better, especially with cattle now sparse to eat upon them. They roamed wide and free, like the bison once had, and various tribes followed them living off them as best they could. Deer and antelope proliferated. Moose as well. Wolves followed these burgeoning herds, but that didn’t frighten them. There were wolves everywhere now. 

The alkali slough wasn’t visible from the road, nor would their truck be now they were over the hill and into the dell. One of them stayed behind to watch the road and warn them of any approach. The rest descended to near the slough’s edge where they began to explore the area. Mixed in with the grey grass that seemed both living and dead were metal remnants. Pieces from trucks and tractors and things even older than that. Wagon wheels. All of it had been thrown here decades ago, left to rust and sink into the slough, eaten away by its salt. It was unclear why these scraps and pieces, most of them broken and useless, had been left here and not thrown away. Some old farmer had obviously thought they might be useful someday and had not wanted to part with them. 

Time and terrible events had made them, not just useful but valuable. The machines they had been part of were long vanished, but what was left could be refashioned and remade for what remained. That slowly fading past that all of them kept patching together until the only thing to do was leave it to rot somewhere. What they couldn’t use themselves they could barter for what they needed, even pay the tolls.  

They came as little as they could, to ensure no one noticed where they were going. Even in such an empty land there were always eyes watching. They took only a few bits and pieces they needed or could sell, always resisting the temptation to collect it all. Better to leave it here where no one but them knew of its existence. There was less now than there had been those first trips, less and less each time. Most of it was rusted almost beyond use. They took whatever they thought could be salvaged and left, wondering what would happen to them when there was nothing left. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

What Moves In the Cold

The coldest of winter days. The sun shining bright with only a few shrivelled clouds in the sky. Even with the sun so vibrant above the cold is obvious. There is a stillness to the air that is visible, as if the world, or this frigid part of it, has stepped out of time for the moment. Nothing stirs. The chickadees and magpies and other birds that do not migrate have vanished. The skies empty, their calls silent. The coyotes and foxes are huddled in their dens. There is only a whisper of a wind, as if it has forgotten its way. Hour by hour, day by day, time does not pass and the cold remains. A picture hanging in a frame. 

The sound is different in the midst of such stillness. When nothing else is moving, the sound of distant footsteps on hard snow is startlingly near. You look for the person but they are somewhere beyond the next hill. There are strange noises in such cold. Some are things you simply never noticed before in amidst the general cacophony of life. The hum of the transformer on the power pole, the occasional rush of a car passing on the highway several kilometres away. Those sounds were always there but now you can actually hear them, loud and present set against the stark quiet. 

But there are other sounds too, inexplicable and unidentifiable, that only exist in this kind of cold. Something between a whistle and groan that comes as the sun sets and only when standing near the house or the garage. At first you think it is the building itself, protesting against the weather, but it sounds too alive for that. Is there some miserable creature huddled against the building for warmth?  

An investigation reveals nothing except the prints of an absent bird hopping about on the snow. There is a feeling like something is there, something watching you. The air briefly stirs, stinging your cheek, and you decide to go in. As your feet crunch under the hard and brittle snow you hear the sound come again. A mournful howl from no animal you have ever heard from before. You quicken up the steps to the door and inside to the warmth.  

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Year in Review

A number of publications related to the Lost Quarter were published in the past year and it seems appropriate to take this opportunity to highlight them for those wishing to better understand this place.  

The first is Days Without End a rather remarkable chronicle of the early days of homesteading on the Quarter by an unknown author from a manuscript discovered in a mourning box that was inadvertently opened following its purchase at a local farm sale. Beginning with his arrival to a desolate land emptied of its inhabitants, he describes those early difficult years of survival when only a handful of settlers were scattered across these parts, the coming of the railroad and the influx of so many others looking to make their lives, and the alternating years of plenty and drought that followed. It includes perhaps the only first-person description of the Great Sibbald Fire that is extant.  

The Silver Locusts is a series of interrelated tales, largely concerning an earlier interregnum where those indigenous to the Quarter (called the First in the text) lived and interacted with these strange new arrivals who had found their way to the Quarter. Misunderstanding, plague, violence, surveying, starvation and exile follow. It illuminates, as well as any other work I have encountered, how the paths into and out of the Quarter, which were once many and well-marked (or at least well-known) were fragmented and forgotten in the aftermath of this encounter. Leaving the Quarter and its environs in its current disjointed space, adrift from all that surrounds it. 

Concerning itself with more current affairs is Black Money a taut, grim survey of the current moment in the Quarter where oil barons and their minions try to cling desperately to what is rapidly becoming apparent is a failing empire. Like the late Byzantine kings their reigns are short-lived and bloody, everyone grasping and grappling for a crown which will not rest easily upon their heads, the foundations of their monuments falling away without their even noticing. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Sotted Lord

Christmas celebrations in the Lost Quarter are much as they are elsewhere in these Dominions and across the world. The customs of the various sects that have established themselves in these parts follow those that were in place in their countries of origin, with a few minor deviations that time and distance have allowed to accumulate. It has also resulted in a peculiarity where the Quarter is the only region where certain customs are currently still followed, their practice having been abandoned or forgotten elsewhere.  

The most famous such case is the Sotted Lord, who has gone by many other names in other locales. Typically such celebrations took place during Christmastide among monks, but in the Quarter it is earlier, most commonly around the winter solstice, and involves much of the local populace. Members of the community who wish to lead the celebrations put forward their names, which are voted on secretly, with the winner declared the Sotted Lord who will lead the revels into the longest night of the year. 

When Those Who Came were first settling the Quarter, the selection of the Sotted Lord would take place the same day as the revels, with homesteaders travelling to the nearest community to cast their lots, the counting of which was done immediately following. Now the voting is conducted by mail, with all those who wish to be considered having to announce their intention by the first day of December, and all those who wish to vote having to submit their ballots by the fifteenth. The counting is done by the postmaster in some communities, while others assign the task to a mayor or other important personage. The newly selected Sotted Lord is announced in the local paper along with the time of their reign.  

That time is typically sunset on the day of the solstice, the shortest day of the year. Those who wish to (and these days it must be said most do not) gather in town at the appointed place, usually a community hall, curling barn or hockey rink. The Sotted Lord is masked and calls the revels, leading those gathered throughout the town. Everyone is dressed in vibrant colours with bells attached to their toques and gloves. Masks, once common, have become less so as the celebrations have become less wild. Candles are lit and carried throughout the streets, with drink shared openly. The Sotted Lord calls upon the mayor and the priests and other town fathers to submit to the reign of the revels. And for the longest night of the year the natural law is reversed. Those who are last come first and those who are masters become servants and beggars act as kings.  

The revellers go from door to door demanding gifts and singing carols, drinking warm cider and mulled wine, until their candles have burned down or the sun has risen. There is much mockery and japes and games of duck-duck-goose in the snow. In most cases, especially in our quiet modern times, this is the extent of the revels. But, in some cases, the debauchery has become excessive (Some would say, disapprovingly, it is by its very nature excessive). Certain politicians who were unpopular have been targeted for particular abuse and have had their homes overrun. There is at least one known instance of a fire consuming several buildings on main street as a result of the revels. 

At the coming of dawn, those revellers who are left abandon the Sotted Lord, leaving them to wander through the wastes of winter, waiting for the return of spring. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Après the Deluge

They gathered for lunch as the midday heat reached its sweltering peak in a white house, one storey, surrounded by a stern wall with a large gate that opened onto a sleepy side street. The humidity was heavier than usual, clouds thick in the sky overhead as she walked from the corner where the tricycle had dropped her off. It was all instantly familiar, though it had been a decade at least since she had walked down this street. Her aunt and cousins were waiting at the gate to greet her, while her uncle stood in the doorway, a hand on the frame to steady himself.  

Inside it was as she remembered. A long room divided between sitting and dining areas, leading to a large kitchen at the back of the house. The table was filled with brimming dishes waiting for them to eat. There was fried chicken and fish, dinuguan and puto, banana fritters and lumpia, papaya and pineapple for dessert. Prepared by her aunt, no doubt under her uncle’s supervision, for since his stroke he’d been unable to work in the kitchen.   

This place felt like home as much as the one she had grown up in. She had stayed over often as a child, running about in the surrounding undeveloped lots, where there was always adventure to be found. In high school and college she and her friends would come over for lunch or to while away the afternoon when they had nothing better to do. Both schools were only a short walk way, so it was convenient, and her uncle was an excellent cook.  

As if it had been waiting for them to sit down to eat, the clouds erupted with thunder and rain, a deluge that quickly swamped the street outside. By the time they were finished and had moved to the couches in the sitting room, the water had passed through the gate and was approaching the entrance, leaving her pleasantly stranded. Her uncle told her, not for the first time, of how the surrounding area had once been swamp with a canal that had connected to the river. She had memories of walking across wooden boards that had been set out by locals to allow passage over the swampy ground. 

The land had long since been reclaimed, the swamp banished, except those days when it rained, of which there were many in these parts. The paved ground couldn’t absorb the water under even the slightest downpour and it swelled up and into the front entryway, a forgotten guest that could never be banished. The past was always like that, she supposed, never completely gone no matter how much of life one built atop it. 

She was thinking this as she and her uncle lapsed into a comfortable silence while her aunt and cousins put away the food. The rain ceased and all she could hear were the clatter of dishes from the kitchen and the rotating of the fan, trying vainly to push the heavy air around. Her eyes wandered to the windowsill and she saw a familiar line of ants steadily and inexorably marching across it. She and her cousins would spend hours trying to disrupt them, turn them from their path, but they always kept on. And evidently still did. They had been crossing that windowsill as long as it had been in existence, she was certain. 

Gradually the water began to recede as the sun came out. One of her cousins went to clear the water out of the entryway with a shovel, though she said it wasn’t necessary. She could get her shoes a little muddy. But no one would hear of it. Goodbyes took forever, as they always did, and it was already well on into the afternoon by the time she stepped outside. There were still puddles on the streets where the gutters didn’t drain, but they disappearing rapidly. She picked her way among them, thinking of different times. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Afternoon in the Park

She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, gaze cast across the adjacent park. A few people were gathered there, idling in the sunlight, but she didn’t seem to be looking at any of them. The day was beautiful, a few cirrus clouds floating on an achingly blue sky, the autumnal warmth of the sun inviting. Despite the warmth she was wearing a long tan trenchcoat, unbelted, a backpack slung over her shoulders and a purse at her side. She was looking up and off, perhaps at something in one of the trees that ringed the park. Only magpies and pigeons remained there, the other birds having started their migrations. Her phone was raised up as if to take a picture. So intent was her focus that she didn’t step out of the middle of the sidewalk to give room to passersby who glared at her in annoyance. 

Abruptly she sank into a crouch, arms resting on knees, phone still held out before her. She spoke in a strained voice, eyes intent on the screen. After a moment, long enough for a reply, she threw the phone on sidewalk. A sob escaped her and she frantically pressed one hand to her lips as though to contain it. With the other she clutched at the phone, staring down at it, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond. 

Crosstown Traffic

One bright and muggy day, like any other day only more so, the traffic was as it always was, chaotic and confused, idling one moment and racing the next. The city had no locus. Roads went everywhere, criss-crossing, climbing over and crawling under each other. A many-tentacled creature whose every appendage had its own perverse agenda. Buildings seemingly had to accommodate the roads rather than the other way around, standing at bewildering angles, disjointed and separated, with the sole purpose of enabling the cars to keep flowing onward to some other destination. 

Yet it did not flow. Traffic was forever snarled. Even the motorcycles that darted through every nook and cranny available, oblivious of any law except for those of geometry, were forced to slow or halt on occasion. You could drive for hours seemingly and suddenly look up and be on a street much like any other, surrounded by cars (surely not the same ones?), swarms of motorcycles still lunging ahead, following their own logic. Looking around you could be filled with the sinking feeling that it had all been for naught, that you had gone nowhere and would never go anywhere. That the future was an endless line of idling traffic going on forever. 

In the midst of this despair a motorcycle appeared, distinctly visible from the rest because of the party balloons tied to the back of its seat. Dozens of them, multicoloured, filled with air and bouncing in the air high above the traffic. So many that you could almost swear the rear tire took air with each bump of pavement. You could almost imagine the motorcycle being lifted up, taking flight, a creature of the air now, drifting where the winds would take it. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Harvest Moon

Harvest moon at the Harvest Dance, shining bright in a clear sky as darkness comes across the land. A cool evening after a warm day, the surest sign of autumn. Everyone gathers at the community hall, parking in the empty field behind it. There’s not much else left of main street anymore. The church was shuttered and torn down, leaving only the foundation. The same with the general store and gas station down by the highway and the elevators that stood by the railway tracks at the other end of street. The post office too has been closed, the building donated to the local museum in town. Now people get their mail from boxes set in front of the hall. 

Town is what this once was, but it has been a long time since anyone thought of it that way. Only the community hall, the hotel bar and a few houses remain. The community is all those who live in the surrounding area and they are the ones coming in to the dance. Volunteers bringing turkeys and mashed potatoes and squash and carrots and jello salads and pie. Everyone pays their ten dollars and they line up for dinner and eat at the long tables set out across the whole hall. The talk is of the weather and the harvest, recently completed for all those in attendance. They compare yields and discuss prices, shaking their heads at those who are still out combining. Equipment troubles and nothing but bad luck. 

Some go home after the potluck, while those that remain put away half the tables and chairs, folding them up underneath the stage The band starts up and the bar at the back gets busy. Two dollars a drink. There are a few dancers but most mill about around the dance floor, sipping drinks or continuing their conversation. In the kitchen the volunteers disburse the leftovers and clean the pots and roasting pans and run the dishwasher.  

As the evening goes on, the crowd gets younger. Kids from high school disappear outside to their trucks where they’ve got a bottle hidden. They saunter back inside, faces flush, convinced of their cleverness, while the adults eye them skeptically. More people arrive from outlying communities. The Altario boys, back from university, appear, taking advantage of the lower age limit to cross the border and drink. This draws the ire of some of the local youths who squint across the hall at these interlopers. 

The evening goes on for awhile with country standards, hard stares and too much whiskey, until one of the locals gets it into his head to take a run at a smirking Altario boy. He sprints across the dance floor, landing an off-balance punch. A halfhearted melee follows, the combatants basically hoping someone will intercede to break things up. Some of the older farmers do, reaching in and pulling people apart, grumbling about the goddamn kids. The local and his friends are deemed responsible and tossed out into the night. 

It’s too early to go home so they wander across the road to the hotel bar, a dismal old place that smells of mildew and stale beer. They order beers and are halfway through them when someone else from the dance arrives, looks them over and says to the bartender: You know those kids aren’t eighteen. Off into the night they go again, crossing the road to the truck with the bottle. After a couple unsteadying drinks they decide to return to the dance. Not quite an hour has passed and bygones may now be bygones. 

They slip in one at a time without incident, all except the one who started the fight. He is turned around at the door and sent back into the night. He returns to the truck with the bottle, though it’s locked so he can’t get at it, figuring everyone else will be back in a minute, especially once they realize he hasn’t made it in. No one returns though and it starts getting cold and his ride home is inside, having apparently decided he’s better off forgetting about him. A few older folks leave the dance and shake their heads at him without comment as they get in their trucks.  

He contemplates trying the bar again, but he’s sobered up enough by now to know that’s a poor idea. Instead, he starts walking, heading north on main street to the highway, which he scampers across into a stubble field. As soon as he is off main street and its two feeble street lights, the darkness is almost total. Only the moon, bright above is there to guide him. He walks along the edge of the field to where the road going north is and starts following it, staying in the safety of the stubble. It’s only five kilometres to home, so it shouldn’t take him much more than an hour. 

Even with the full moon, the going is tough, the ground uneven, and though he is much more sober than he was he still has trouble keeping his feet. His eyes adjust as he goes, the darkness changing around him. The sky, once just a moon and a vast blackness speckled by a few bright stars is now full of light, thousands of stars visible. He stands teetering atop a rise, looking up in awe at the vastness of it all, beyond his comprehension, and is filled with indescribable emotion that is bigger than himself somehow. More than he can contain.  It is a long while before he notices the yard light from home is visible ahead in the darkness and starts toward it.