Now that I have to go to the office twice a week (I do not mind the going part, but ah, how do I hate the being in the office part!), I start seeing my time in the bus as a thing of beauty and mystery – a time when time itself is suspended, when I exist outside of my daily routine (this time is neither work, nor play, nor family nor a personal time in its strict sense), yet I very much exist. A lot of my thinking, wondering and dreaming happens on this morning bus ride (I do not feel the same way about evening buses that tend to be crowded and uncomfortable). I secretly like the feeling of moving through space, yet being outside of time. Sometimes I read. That is, I oblige myself to read, so as not to waste valuable 30 minutes, but in reality my reading never progresses more than half a page – the rest of the journey I let my gaze and my thoughts wander.

The trip itself starts among the low-rises of middle-class residential suburb, continues to the highway, passes one sprawling mall, then more highway, ligned on both sides by industrial buildings, a second mall and ends in front of a brand new station of a brand new electric rail. On an alternate route, it goes: suburb, highway, mall, more highway that runs along CN railway, then a very ugly part of a bigger suburb that consists mostly of car repair shops, questionable bars and cheap fast-foods, a somewhat fancier part of the suburb, an urban university campus and finally a metro.

Regardless of the route, it is on the first short portion of the highway that one sees a bit of the land. First, it is just a large field with few spindly trees and a large sturdy farmhouse in the middle. Then, as the highway makes a gentle turn left, towards the mall, one can see the blue shape of Mont Bruno and a second smaller hill on the horizon. Then everything disappears, replaced by concrete and metal shapes of the windowless shopping containers.

It is a brief and not particularly beautiful view, but I came to love it. I think it tought me how much of the land was taken, misused, altered and appropriated, yet even in its subjugated form the land remains alive and beautiful. Even through the dirty window of the bus, even as a parenthesis between urban sprawl and commercial zones, the land offers everything: a vast open space, a view of the horizon and blue shapes of the hills covered with forest. The land appeals to the wild and authentic part of me – the one that hates every minute spent in the office and the very proximity of Sainte-Catherine, but loves the high ceilings of the National Library, the hush of bookstores, the friendly rush of the cafés, being out and about – as far out and as much about as I possibly can.