Plug In the Truck and Other Unwritten Rules

The first thing a newcomer notices is the cords. Little black plugs dangling from the front of every pickup in every parking lot, like the trucks have all been put on a leash. They have. In January a block heater is not an accessory. It is the difference between going to work and calling in to explain why you didn't.

So that's lesson one. Buy the extension cord before you need it, because the week you need it, everyone else does too.

People arrive here for the work, mostly. Oil and gas, forestry, the farms that turn the whole county yellow with canola in July. Some of them plan to stay two years and are still here twenty later, slightly baffled, owning a quad. The city has a way of doing that. It is not pretty in the way the mountains are pretty. It is useful, and then one evening it is suddenly beautiful, and you are not sure when that happened.

Usually it happens in Muskoseepi Park. The valley runs right through the middle of town along Bear Creek, and newcomers tend to underrate it until they walk it. Trails, the reservoir, a pavilion, skating in winter, and enough trees to briefly forget there is a Walmart within driving distance. It is the best thing about living here and almost nobody from outside the city knows it exists.

Lesson two: the weather is not a topic, it is a relationship. Winter is long and properly cold, the kind of cold where your nostrils freeze together on the inhale. Spring is mud. Summer is short, green and frankly glorious, with daylight that lingers past the point of reason in June, and mosquitoes that have clearly heard about the daylight too. September is the best month. This is not up for debate.

The trade-off for all that dark in December is the aurora. On a clear winter night, drive a few minutes past the edge of town and look north. You don't need an app. You need a thermos and some patience.

Lesson three: the swans. Grande Prairie calls itself the Swan City, and newcomers assume this is branding. It is, but it is also true. Trumpeter swans nest in the region, and Saskatoon Island Provincial Park, just west of town, is where to see them. Go in spring. Bring binoculars and keep your voice down. They are large birds and they know it.

While you're out that way, the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum sits near Wembley, close to the Pipestone Creek bonebed, where an alarming number of horned dinosaurs apparently died in the same spot. It's worth the drive, and better than it has any right to be. The Kleskun Hills, northeast of the city, are a strange little patch of badlands that looks like it wandered off from Drumheller and got lost. Worth an afternoon. Not worth a weekend.

For winter, Nitehawk handles skiing and tubing down into the Wapiti River valley. It is not Whistler. It is twenty minutes away, and on a Tuesday evening that matters more.

Lesson four: distance is measured in hours. Edmonton is a long day there and back. Dawson Creek is close enough for supper. Grande Cache is a scenic drive down Highway 40 that you should do once in fall, slowly, watching for elk. You will put kilometres on your vehicle you didn't know a vehicle could hold.

Lesson five, and the last: people wave. On rural roads, from tractors, from the next truck over at the gas station. Wave back. Plug in your truck. Learn to love September.

The cord goes in the grille, and the grille faces the outlet. Back in, every time.