ABSTRACT
I remember the road trip westward along the Trans-Canada Highway from Regina: wide-open lanes, fields of flax, and beehives; July heat. We theorized hope, chatted landscape, recorded dialogue, my professor, classmate, and I. The field trip flew, and I felt only a little guilt for missing my kissing cousin's wedding that weekend in Victoria, although I had little romance for our destination, the University of Lethbridge, home of my Alberta-raised redneck cousins. Yet, somehow I knew that this journey—an optional part of my first curriculum class at the University of Regina—was not optional.
