August 4, 2019 – Oh Canada … my former home and adopted land. There you go. The first sentence of the Canadian national anthem, adapted for my life, and as much “musical” as this story will be.

Anyway, I’m officially addicted to Netflix. And I’ve started another show. This one is called Heartland. Basically, I search “horses” in the Netlfix search bar, and that’s how I choose my shows. The last one was a British series, mostly for young people, called Free Reign. I watched all three seasons over a month or so. Then my next search brought up Heartland. This show has eleven seasons, crazy right, and I’m on about episode six of season one. I had strange reaction to even the first few minutes of episode one of Heartland, a really strong déjà vu feeling. I was convinced I had been to the place.

Heartland depicts a family, consisting of a teen-age girl who takes after her deceased (as of the first episode) mother who has (or had) a gift with troubled horses, someone who instinctively could relate to horses. There’s an older sister who had a high-powered job in New York, come home for the funeral, and who then gets involved with the troubled finances of the family’s 640-acre ranch. There’s the grandfather, a Western character, the father of the deceased mom. There are various other characters too: an almost-boyfriend, a best friend, a mean girl, and various horse characters included too, but one of the main characters is the ranch itself, called Heartland. It has rolling hills; it’s next to the Rocky Mountains, I’d know those anywhere; it has crystal clear streams, blue skies, green grass, not the bare-down green like I think of as lawn grass, but sort of light green, and trees with white bark, sort of wide- set and thin, and pine trees too. It was familiar, so familiar that it hurt to watch, so familiar that it was distracting. I even had tears in my eyes a few times. Sure the show had some sad parts, a mom dying isn’t an easy scene for me, but why was I crying when I saw the color of the grass?

I kept rewinding to look at the scenery. I thought, yes, I know this. Northern New Mexico is a place for me now. I have land there. I like to go there. There are the same sort of clear streams there. The Rocky Mountains are very close, about 40 miles or so. A couple of times, I’ve traveled the 30 or 40 miles to the part of Southern Colorado that’s near these towns I stay in. I’ve traveled those roads, seen the Rocky Mountains there. I thought it must be there – Southern Colorado, near Durango. But I questioned that. The trees weren’t the same. The grasslands weren’t the same.

Then a new character was introduced – the long-lost, estranged dad. The method to introduce this character was by way of a letter, and they showed the return address. The post abbreviation was AB. That’s Alberta for those of you who might not be up on your Canadian province abbreviations.

I lived in Alberta, Calgary particularly, from the age of 6 to 12. My family moved there for my dad’s oil work. My dad took us to oil wells all over, but there was one particular trip we used to take. It was to visit his friend who had a ranch. Mind you, when I use the word ranch, I’m not talking about some out-of-city acreage that one might have, but something that’s at least 640 acres. You need a section (that’s 640 acres) to constitute a ranch. These five-acre horse stables around Los Angeles that horse trainers call a ranch … aren’t. And my dad’s friend’s place was big. I didn’t really know how big, but big, and it most definitely was a ranch. And while I didn’t remember where it was, honestly, this Heartland place looked like my very distant memory of my dad’s friend’s ranch.

So I researched. The show is filmed in the foothills, in two towns called Millarville (the red dot on the cover photo) and High River, located southwest of Calgary. The location of the fictitious ranch is an actual working horse farm, and you can’t go there, but I was determined to find information, and I found a person on YouTube who had toured the place. I’ve been in a conversation with that person on YouTube; you’ll see that if you read the comments.

I sent that YouTube video to my dad. I asked if I had been there. I told my dad I had memories that this Heartland place looked like the guest facilities at his friend’s ranch. We used to get to stay there. The house was a log house, so I thought… maybe? Maybe it’s the same as Heartland because that show also depicts a log house. My dad responded in email in the manner that my dad responds, very engineer-like, telling me this was on the road to Pincher Creek where his friend bought the 6,500 place in 1968, which is now owed by his sons, that I could find pictures on the Internet. There’s so much information in that sentence, you can’t even imagine. First, 6,500 acres? What? What is that? That’s so huge. My goodness, the things I took for granted in my life. Second, that family is still there. I often wondered what it would have been like to stay. Third, I don’t want to look at pictures on the Internet of this 6,500 acre ranch that this man gave to his sons when I struggle every month to pay for my 38 acres in New Mexico. Fourth, my New Mexico obsession seems to be me, perhaps, recreating those memories. Fifth, I never knew I remembered this so well. Sixth, my dad always treated me like I had perfect understanding of everything and everyone he knew, even though I was a child. Seventh, my life has had such distinct chapters that they are almost visual, and they are full of places, times and events that I can’t go back to; it makes it hard to hang on to the memories if you never see them. Eighth, I am really glad I can remember at this level of detail because it was a really long time ago, and just the other day I was thinking I’m starting to forget things. I could go on….

Oh and by the way, Pincher Creek was the name of my fictitious monster that I used to scare my sister with. It’s a name I’ll never forget. I told that story in the comment on YouTube to the perfect stranger in Alberta who filmed these places. Still to this day if I’m sort of scared, the name of that monster – Pincher Creek – will pop in my head. I’m thankful to this Alberta person for making this video. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to going back to the places I spent my life as a girl.