Red Deer Sandbars - bone china mug

4 October 2014 finds me on a long, wood-plank bridge over the Red Deer River, 16.3 kilometers upstream of the Transcanada Pipeline crossing. The bridge is just north of a tiny place named Buffalo, a couple of hours north of Medicine Hat, Alberta. I am, again, enjoying sandbars, looking downriver with the prairie wind and the afternoon sun both at my back. The bridge has its north end beside a grove of tall, arching Plains Cottonwoods which shelters our campsite, and it crosses the broad Red Deer River on three big cement piers with a plank bed and four spans of steel girders, all the way over to the velvety golden prairie hills along the south shore. I'm sitting on my painting caddy, with the palette snugged safely between my feet and the wooden curb so that the wind doesn't blow it away, and my canvas is propped against the top edge of the curb and held between my knees. Across the sandbar directly beneath the bridge, the tracks of a large Moose show where it emerged from the river and walked across to firmer sand in the direction of the riverbank.