Sweet Smell of Hope

The morning air in Fernie smelled like honey and flowers. It smelled the kind of sweet that made me think honeysuckles actually involve honey. Which they don't, but I wish they did.

When the world smells this delicious, you pay attention.

We left Fernie unsure where we were headed, knowing only that lunch by the river was essential. We gathered provisions from Sparwood, passing by the World's Largest Truck and a sign reading "Modern mining benefits us all" on the way into the dismal-looking small town strip mall.

We headed further east through the cluster of towns in the Crowsnest Pass. The only thing we knew for sure was we had to find a church. Not for any spiritual purpose, unless you consider espresso to be holy. We were looking for the little church-turned-coffee-house where Drea and Gilles had stopped on their journey north from San Fransisco.

We found it in Coleman, a simple country church with a steeply pitched roof and unadorned steeple, sharing a parking lot with a good ole boys bar called Rum Runners. We gave each other high fives and walked in.

The Blackbird Coffee House is part coffee shop, part knick-knack shop and part museum. It looks as though someone's grandmother shook all the Depression china and crocheted doo-dads out of her 1950s suburban bungalow and into a bohemian 'let's smoke French cigarettes, play guitar and discuss existentialism all night' coffee house.

It's run by a small young family from Calgary who traded urban life for small town dreams this May. She pads around in her Uggs, making really good lattes, while he bakes muffins looking like a welder in a china shop. While we waited for our coffees, their two blond boys skulked shyly around the antiques and doo-dads, waiting for their lunch: homemade soup Dad tended in between cutting up fresh-baked brownies.

The ceiling of the church was hand-painted in pale blue and white. It didn't hold a candle to the ornate extravaganzas in Europe, but standing there in the middle of that transformed church, looking up, I felt something that I didn't feel in any French cathedral. I felt, not hope itself, but hope's power to transform.

I imagined this couple sitting up late, lamplight spilling across at their kitchen table, hashing through how to make their life work the way they wanted. How they could make their dreams come true together. What kind of grand adventure they would create for themselves and their boys. I can imagine his voice rising in excitement at the thought of renovating the back of the church and building in a studio for his glassblowing or metalworking. I can see their hands reaching for each other as they imagined nights filled with song and laughter, warming the dead of winter.

Something different, something better.

It's what Boyfriend and I wanted when we hunkered down in a cheap Waterton motel. Surrounded by the smooth-topped mountains of southern Alberta, we entered new territory. A place where we laid bare all we want in this life, placed it gently on the table and breathed it into life. This was a place where transformation took the place of permanence. A place where uncertainty reigned and the possibilities were endless. A place where dreams would be fought and died for, if it came to that.

In the morning, the smell of smoke blended with the scent of wildflowers in the growing heat of a new day. It was as though something old had burned to the ground so something else could live. I don't know what it is yet. I know it's tiny and fragile and I need to protect it. I know it could be great if we let it.