This town exists for the dead, not the living
-Rebecca Yarros, Great and Precious Things
Have you ever been somewhere that seems somehow completely frozen in time? I feel as if this sensation is a bit harder to come by in Canada, at least in the more developed areas. I’m not sure if this is because of Canada’s late entrance onto the scene as a nation, or at least the Nation of Canada as we know it. Or, perhaps, I just haven’t seen enough of the country as a whole which is likely true. As Hank from Corner Gas emphasizes, “It’s a VAST country, VAST.”
At any rate, this is a sensation I’ve more consistently felt when travelling through Europe and I imagine it would be even more profound in some places in Africa and the Middle East where remnants of impossibly ancient civilizations remain.
Devastatingly, where I felt this sense of frozen time most viscerally in France was not amongst any venerable old buildings, though there were many of those, but rather in the depths of The Somme. And despite how raw we still were from attempting to comprehend the horrors of Dieppe…This is where we were headed next.
Continue reading “Existing for the Dead”
Erin of the Hills 