Part Two 

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I’ll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

Some of the best conversations that I have ever had have been travelling down a prairie road–beside my friends, the tumbleweed–whether it was an exhaustingly hot Friday after a week of camp with Laura, or returning from Saskatoon with Tracy–helping her with selling something or other, or the trips to the Qu’Apelle valley with friends who like to sing Meatloaf and Queen, or driving with my Dad back from Alberta.

On one such trip with my dad, for some reason, I told him about Tumbleweed Truthteller and/or my fascination with tumbleweeds.  He enlightened me to something I had never thought of.  Obviously, this is not verbatim, but I will do my best.

Tumbleweeds are not necessarily a symbol of good things.  During the depression, tumbleweeds signified the poor soil, poverty and a drifting, vagrant lifestyle.  There is more to the tumbleweed than the cowboys.  There is more than a superficial metaphor, but some real pain behind them. 

For me, that pain is outside of my lifetime and it’s hard for me to see, but I know that it is there.  I know it is there because of the way my grandparents are/were.  My grandma keeps everything.  My mother, who is not poor, is constantly worried about not having money which I imagine is a direct result of depression upbringing.  And I have a habit of being a bit of a scavenger.  I suppose there might just be a little tumbleweed in all of us.

I read today that tumbleweeds are not native to North America.  You might think it was from Russia because they are often referred to as Russian Thistles but originally they are from Australia.  Damn Aussies spreading their seed.  Then they went to Russia and then to North America.  You can basically find the tumbleweed anywhere in the world and maybe that is more a sign of our times than any biological reason.