I barely slow down through Sundre. The day has been spent dawdling down weary gravel roads, winding my way north — doing what I can to hold off Lacombe County. Now, with the sky turning black, I'm happy to be back on the highway. Still, it's been four years since I've seen my father, four years since I've been on the farm. I'm in no rush.

A few minutes north, it starts to pour. It's the kind of rain that doesn't happen often in Alberta. Coming down so fast and heavy it sounds like roaring static. Straight ahead, lightning blankets the sky, followed by an immediate, deafening crack of thunder. I hunch over the steering wheel, trying to focus on the road. I feel claustrophobic. Aspen and spruce flank the highway. The rain is thick on the windshield, and the lightning and thunder are relentless. I pull off, onto a side road, and then onto the shoulder. There hasn't been another car since Sundre. I tilt my seat back and close my eyes. I'm waiting for worse. For hail.

Through my eyelids, light flashes. Each time it does I count the seconds between the lightning and thunder. I remember as a kid my father telling us that each second represented how many miles away the centre of the storm was. I'd never learned this in school, or heard it anywhere else, but I still believed it. I remember counting out loud with my brother as we stared outside after a flash of lightning. Our voices strained and nervous, waiting for the thunder to interrupt us.

"ONE...TWO...THR--" The thunder jolted us back from the window in excitement.
"Three seconds!" William cried.
"That's pretty close," said our father. "We're right near the heart of it!"

In the car I keep counting until the thunder is only a distant roll. By the time I open my eyes and bring my seat forward the rain has nearly stopped. There is a large pile of field-stones on the property beside the road, slick and glossy in the rain, tossed there when the land was first cleared for pasture. An unintended cairn that has gathered enough dirt between the stones to grow weeds.

The clouds are starting to thin, and I can just make out a hint of the sky. Patches of denim, Mom would've called it. She said grandma used to tell her to look for a piece of blue sky as big as blue jeans. If you could find that amongst the clouds, it meant the storm was over. Neither of them were around anymore. Just dad on the farm now.

I look at the map. A trip through Rocky Mountain House will only take me slightly off-course. No need to rush now that the rain stopped.