Where the Lines Lead

Rob stood in an open field, tossing his frisbee into a steady Alberta breeze and catching it each time it returned. After several throws, he decided to send one a little higher, watching as the disc climbed into the air, hovered for a moment… and stopped.

“Oh no,” Rob said, recognizing the feeling immediately. The Wind had found him again.

The frisbee tipped sideways and shot across the field, leaving Rob scrambling after it.

“HEY!” he shouted as he ran, but this time the Wind wasn’t carrying his frisbee toward a falling apple, a bathtub, or a strange flying machine.

It was carrying it toward a line.

A bright red line stretched through the air ahead of him, curving left, looping right, dipping toward the ground, and curling upward again.

Rob stopped running and stared at it. “Okay,” he said. “That’s new.”

The red line wiggled, almost as though it had heard him, before continuing across the field.

Curious about where it might be going, Rob followed.

Soon a blue line appeared beside the red one, followed by yellow and white, and the four colours twisted around one another without ever becoming tangled.

Rob reached out to touch one, but his finger passed straight through it, leaving him even more puzzled.

“Definitely new,” he muttered.

The lines swept forward again, climbing over the top of a hill, and Rob chased after them until he reached the summit and stopped in surprise.

Below him was a man painting, his brush moving slowly across the surface in front of him. With every curve, turn, and sweep of the brush, the colourful lines surrounding Rob seemed to move in exactly the same way.

Rob looked at the lines, then at the painter, and back at the lines again, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Are you doing that?” he asked.

The man smiled and introduced himself. “I’m Alex.”

“Rob,” he replied.

Alex glanced around, looking slightly puzzled. “Doing what?”

Rob pointed everywhere. “That.”

As Alex dipped his brush into the paint again, another line curled through the air, and Rob watched it with growing fascination.

“How do you know where it’s going?” he asked.

Alex continued painting and replied, “Do you always need to know?”

Rob considered the question before answering, “No. But I usually like to.”

Alex smiled, offering no further explanation, and Rob was beginning to get used to answers that only gave him more to think about.

The red line began moving again, leading Rob past Alex’s paintings, some of which were filled with bright colours and movement, while others made him stop and look more closely.

He wasn’t always sure what he was seeing. Sometimes a painting reminded him of a river, a winding road, or the Wind itself, although it might have been none of those things, or perhaps all of them.

Turning back toward Alex, Rob pointed to one of the paintings and asked, “What is this one supposed to be?”

Alex studied the painting for a moment before looking at Rob.

“What do you see?”

Rob tilted his head one way, then the other, trying to find something familiar in the shapes and colours.

“I see… something moving,” he said. “Maybe water. Or sky.”

He stepped closer, studying the painting from a different angle before admitting, “Actually, I’m not sure.”

Alex smiled, and Rob couldn’t help but laugh.

“You really like making me work for this, don’t you?”

The longer Rob looked, the more details he began to notice. Some lines seemed to race across the canvas while others wandered, occasionally moving together before pulling apart again.

He began to wonder whether the paintings were really puzzles he was supposed to solve, or whether they were stories he was meant to spend time with.

As Rob moved closer to another painting, something near the bottom caught his attention. It wasn’t a name or a familiar signature, but a number.

287.

Rob pointed toward the three digits and asked, “What’s that?”

Alex’s brush stopped, and for the first time since Rob had arrived, everything seemed a little quieter.

“Is that your signature?” Rob asked.

Alex looked toward the painting, and Rob thought about what he knew of the man standing beside him. Alex had a name, a family, a culture, and a home, but 287 was a treaty number he had carried, one he later sometimes placed on his paintings.

Rob looked from the number to Alex and said, “But that’s not your name.”

Alex shook his head, leaving Rob to study the three digits again.

A number couldn’t tell him about the land Alex knew, his family, his memories, or his language. It couldn’t describe everything Alex had seen and experienced, or hold all the things that made Alex who he was.

“So why put it there?” Rob asked.

Alex looked at the painting for a moment before picking up his brush again, and this time Rob didn’t press for an answer.

Perhaps the number was there because some things shouldn’t disappear, or because remembering could be part of the story too.

As the Wind moved softly through the grass, the red line began to move again, inviting Rob to follow it farther.

This time Rob didn’t chase the line but walked alongside it, taking his time as it led him past paintings filled with colours, shapes, and stories.

He was beginning to understand that the line wasn’t only going somewhere. It had come from somewhere too, carrying something from the people and places that had shaped it, from memories, and from experiences that had brought both joy and hurt.

Rob watched Alex paint for a while before asking, “Can a line tell a story?”

Alex raised his brush slightly and replied, “What do you think?”

Rob sighed. “There it is again.”

Alex laughed, and the red line curled around another painting, drawing Rob’s attention back to the canvas.

This time, instead of asking what the painting meant, Rob simply looked, wondering where the line had been before it reached the canvas, what places it remembered, which people it carried, and what stories might live inside it.

As he studied the painting, the red line suddenly rose into the air, followed by the blue, yellow, and white lines, which circled above him before stretching away together.

Rob turned toward Alex and asked, “Are we following those?”

Alex smiled, and Rob grabbed his frisbee with a knowing grin.

“I knew you were going to say that.”

Before he could take another step, the Wind caught him.

WHOOSH!

Rob landed on his back.

Again.

“One of these days,” he muttered, “the Wind could just use a door.”

But when he looked up, he forgot all about his landing.

Above him was a painting unlike anything he had ever seen, stretching across an enormous dome with colours and lines flowing outward in every direction.

Rob slowly got to his feet, staring at the extraordinary sight above him.

“Whoa.”

He was standing beneath Alex Janvier’s Morning Star.

Rob turned in a slow circle, discovering something new everywhere he looked. Red, yellow, blue, and white flowed across the enormous painting, the same colours he’d been following since his Adventure began.

Except now, instead of one line moving through the air, there were thousands stretching across the dome.

Alex stood nearby, looking upward, and Rob walked over to join him.

“I think I figured something out,” he said.

Alex waited, giving him time to explain.

“When I first saw the line, I wanted to know where it was going,” Rob began, looking up at the painting again. “But now I think I’m more curious about where it came from.”

Alex smiled as Rob continued studying the lines above them, thinking about the stories they carried of the land, of change, of what had been lost, and of what could still continue.

“Because every line has to begin somewhere,” Rob said.

The Wind began to stir, and Rob recognized the familiar feeling that meant his time here was almost over.

Before leaving, he looked up once more at the lines stretching across Morning Star, thinking about how something as simple as a line could begin with a brush, a place, a memory, or a person.

Perhaps that was also why two people could stand beneath the same painting and see something different, because each person brought their own experiences and stories with them.

As the Wind lifted Rob’s frisbee from his hand, he watched it float upward and curve through the air, imagining for a moment that an invisible line was following behind it, bending and turning as the disc continued its journey.

Rob reached up and caught the frisbee with his right hand, then turned toward Alex with another question.

“Do you think a line ever really ends?”

Alex looked back toward the painting while Rob waited for an answer, but when he finally turned around, he simply smiled.

Rob laughed. “Right. Another question.”

The Wind tugged at his jacket, growing stronger until it lifted him away.

WHOOSH!

Rob landed back in the field where his Adventure had begun, surrounded by the familiar quiet of the Alberta sky.

The colourful lines were gone, leaving only Rob, his frisbee, and the Wind moving gently through the grass.

He ran his finger around the edge of the disc, following its circular shape and noticing that it was a line with no obvious beginning and no obvious end.

Looking across the open field, Rob stepped forward and threw his frisbee, watching it climb into the sky along a path only the Wind could see.

As the disc travelled through the air, he thought about the lines he’d followed, the paintings he’d explored, and the stories Alex had helped him notice. A line might begin with a brush, a memory, or a story, but perhaps it could also begin with something as simple as a question.

And as Rob watched his frisbee continue across the sky, one question remained.

Where does a line begin?