Athabasca Evening - bone china mug

20 September 2014 finds me looking over the Athabasca River from the "high load bypass" of the Thickwood exit from Highway 63 in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The late afternoon shadows purple the folds in the hills across the wide sweep of the Athabasca, with its graceful complexity of flats, bars, and islands. In contrast to the busy congestion on the highway behind us, serving the bitumen economy of Fort McMurray, this is a vista of peace and open spaces. From our high vantage point, we realise that the only vehicular access to the river is at pipeline crossings - and as our eyes become used to the distance, we begin to notice that the scene before us is also being appreciated here and there, by tiny people with tiny trucks, cameras, dogs, and children - but thinly enough dispersed in space and time, that each party can feel as if they have the river flats almost to themselves.