Seven Seas Apart
User Story
By Ali Dar
This is a story of similarities and differences; connection and disconnect; familiarity and fear of the unknown. When I landed in Edmonton about 6 years ago, a newcomer from a world seven seas apart, it was quite an alien city for me. Due to internet and media, this world had been shrunk so you could virtually visit any city even before you visited or came to make your home in it.
There was enough available on websites to explain and introduce Edmonton, but that feeling of living in the city only comes when you really start living there. Other than a good job and other basics, that feeling of intimacy and connection is what you need. It was April and most of the landscape was quite brown; I lived in a desert mountains province of Pakistan that presented the same landscape as your land. It was not even couple of days when we experienced a surprised: there was a foot of snow on the ground.
My love for Edmonton started when I saw the landscape change in early May. It went on until the first week of June when it was totally changed to refreshing green. I could again relate to my childhood where I used to experience the same complete turnaround from brown dead land to green most living land. Summers in Edmonton – you simply love them. The end of August and early September brings yet another big change – plenty of colours all around. You can feel change in the air and simply walking across the North Saskatchewan River provides you spectacular views, colours on trees and on the ground.
Winters are totally different though; I could not relate it to anything I have ever experienced. The minimum temperature I had experienced was -17 Celsius, but -40 was out of this world for me. The power of change is something I love about Edmonton. From March ‘til June and from September ‘til November, we go through a change that is so powerful.
Today sometimes I feel as if I have always been in Edmonton, as if I have never been or lived anywhere else, but every now and then when I see a new bud on a tree or a first autumn leaf, it reminds me of my life story. It reminds me of different places I have lived in, and there I pay a fast visit to my past.
I would love to write about the wonderful and friendly people I have met and made friends with, but humans to me are humans – they are the same everywhere. But this feeling of attachment and intimacy I experience in the changing seasons of Edmonton is priceless.
