Ewan is a city boy. Born and raised hanging out at the mall, riding the bus and wandering around downtown, he was used to urban life. I, on the other hand, am a country girl. Hanging out in the barn, riding the tractor through the fields and wandering through the woods, I was used to rural life. He wore dress pants, dress shirts and fancy shoes. I wore jeans, wool sweaters and a bandana. We were a pretty unlikely match. But something about him being a big city boy intrigued me. And something about me being a farm girl had him hooked. So I took him back to my home town to show him the ropes. The tractors. The barns. The cows. Oh, the cows. The minute he saw them he was horrified. He was worried that something was wrong because they were covered in flies and he was scared they were sick and dying. I of course, lost it laughing and had to explain that it was normal and the cows were not in fact dying. The city boy was out of his element. But not to be outdone, the next week I visited him in the big city and panicked when he sprinted across the road with traffic flying in both directions. There I was standing on the sidewalk with Ewan hollering at me from the other side of the road to just run. “Just run” he kept saying as if playing Frogger was part of my normal daily routine. Every time I took a step forward a car would rush by and I’d run back against the buildings, sweaty and panicked and on the verge of tears. I was 16 before our town got a Tim Horton’s, so busy streets just weren’t something I was used to. But Ewan came running back across the street. Grabbed my hand and we weaved back and forth between the cars together. I even lost my shoe and he went back and grabbed it for me. In that moment he was my hero. He was a city boy. I was a country girl. We were an unlikely match, but it worked. And I eventually learned how to cross a city street without crying…
Katelin and Steve are the opposite. He was a country boy and she was a city girl. He grew up on a farm and she grew up far from one. Naturally she was intrigued by the farm lifestyle and wanted to know everything about it. Animals, auctions, harvesting, tractors. You name it, she wanted to know. Steve even taught her the difference between straw and wheat and let her feed the barn cats and took her for tractor rides through the fields. One day during the summer Steve decided that he wanted to show her his tree house/fort from his childhood. Not realizing how many years it had been since last venturing deep in the woods, they weren’t really prepared for how hard the hike became. Since getting rid of their sheep the grass had grown up quite high. There were thorn bushes everywhere. And snakes, spiders and pickers were attacking Katelin at every turn. Dressed in flip flops, capris and a t-shirt, she wasn’t exactly dressed for the bush adventure either. Steven insisted it was just long grass, but she insisted that they were in the middle of what seemed like a jungle. As Steve kept wandering around saying that the fort was ‘just right over there’ and then ‘maybe it’s this way’ and then ‘it has to be right over here’, Katelin was pretty convinced that they were lost. And 100% certain that she was going to die in this ‘forest’. So without hesitation Steve picked her up. Gave her a piggyback and started the journey out of the big, scary woods. He kept her safe from the snakes and the spiders and the thorns. He made 100% sure that she would not die on their adventure and found his way back to the farm. Covered in sweat, burrs, scratches, mosquito bites and exhausted, they emerged from the bush in pretty rough shape. But Katelin was safe and that was all that mattered. He had saved her. In that moment Katelin had found her hero.
He was a country boy. She was a city girl. It was an unlikely match, but sometimes those are the best kind :)
- Brianna (photos by Yaira)
by Brianna
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