I will not be addressing this post to ladies, gents or the like as this is a recording of a previous life.
    Do you ever remember a better place that you were once in a physical fashion? Maybe a place you grew up or a place that you just had a glimpse of? I just recently saw some pictures of the place I grew up in. I grew up in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, Canada. It's the most beautiful place on Earth. There are trees and lakes as far as the eye can see. There was once a river flowing through my backyard with no higher property taxes because it wasn't a coveted place to be as there were streams, rivers, and forests in everyone's backyard. At dawn, the sun looked like an explosion of life through the treed horizon and at dusk, it lingered softly as if not wanting to leave that place. The animals were true, no man could tame them or own them, including domestic dogs and cats. You could go for a walk for 5 minutes out in the middle of nowhere and not hear the sound of traffic and instead contemplate the moss, the leaves, the mushrooms. Skipping out of school meant going for a canoe trip upstream to get to a mysterious hidden spring. The air was fresh all the time and when it was really cold, aurora borealis would appear in the sky at night.
    The rest of Saskatchewan would frown on this place saying it wasn't even civilization anymore, that it was a forgotten cesspool of crime and depravity. To a degree this was true, La Ronge was basically cut off. Building materials were hard to come by and social tact even more so.
    Here's what I miss. I miss the fact that if anyone had some to say, they said it to your face and there was none of this behind-your-back political bullshit that you see anywhere else. I miss the second-to-none beauty that the physical landscape projected and lastly, the sense of a spiritual place of power. This was my home.