Under the light of the Nanton Sisters
Actualizado: 2 abr 2020
On a sunny day the Highway II smiles and proudly wear a new dress. Even the asphalt look fresh and eager to tell stories about the last hot days of summer and the sweet fragrance of the coming autumn. Mint and hay perfume is wherever you go, as well as hawks immersed on deep cavillation about the clean horizon and what it promises to a bird of pray who contemplate the course of the day.
Contemplation is a good word to define the mood of the hour -it’s noon on the Highway II-, and, of course, it tells the mindset of the huge Nanton Twins under the blue sky of August The two ladies preside the entrance to Nanton, when you go south trough the Highway II from Calgary, and always give the impression of playing a protection role over the town. Watching over the rooftops, taking care of Nanton people as benevolent goddesses of nature -of human nature, to be more precise.
The twins are the two wooden symmetrical structures that makes the first grain elevator of Nanton. Pale green, they make a promise of welfare to town inhabitants. If built on the late twenties of the 20th century, as an effect of the economic growth aimed by the Canadian Railways and playing social roles that included politic meetings and sport discussion, the twins maintain their role on the local people imagination, because nobody can escape to their architectural presence. They tell a story engrained on the town, a tale of ambitious european migrants arriving Alberta at the dawn of the past century, of train’s noisy songs, of harsh winters and the perseverance and stoicism necessary to face nature and weather challenges. Even today, at the eve of autumn, a little cold breeze would carry the edgy announce of the heavy blizzards of January, and it makes you think about what it takes to live your life on the open fields.
Nevertheless, that’s why the sisters were builded. I can’t think about them but in terms of women, of brave matrons watching for the good seed, for the family meals, even for the heath of the hearth. Yes, the sisters are out of business nowadays, but their solely presence on the Nanton Lanscape -like wise grandmas who know it all, who knows all the routes of the past and have the ability of reading the wind- encourages everybody to live, to push.
August 2019
Juan Carlos Montero Vallejo