Recently, someone joked that they were driving along county road 40 last week, climbed Spring Hill and entered a whole different weather system with six inches of snow. That's where I live, on top of the escarpment.

We don't have the cliffs that mark the escarpment in other places, but we are high enough to catch different weather patterns and the back of our property is a steep, downward slope. From there, we can see across the Strathaven valley and watch the progress of the seasons on the other side. From the house, things seem relatively flat, but we are high enough that the horizon is distant.

I only lived in a valley for four months working in Jasper. There, the river takes a wide bend so the mountains don't crowd right on top of you, but they are a shelter on all sides. They slope up from the town's edge, mark the sky, block the sun. Paths and roads and a cable car lead upward, but getting a wide view is a long climb.

When I lived in Montreal, the view was a series of straight lines. My narrow street was lined with three story apartment buildings. Go out the door and you could look up or down to the next main road, but those directions were the only choice. The main roads were wider, felt a bit more free, but still the stores and apartments that lined them kept the flow of people and even eyes narrowed.

At least in downtown Montreal, there is the mountain. I lived on one side and worked on the other so when time allowed, I could climb above the city buildings and see across the river to the plain beyond or over the buildings to the suburbs.

In downtown Toronto, I get claustrophobic. There are a few wide streets with lower buildings, like Spadina, but with the rushing river of traffic and people, the movement is only up and down the road. Eyes can look up at whatever sky is there, but the view is narrow. And in so many places, not just Bay Street, the street is a canyon with walls that stretch up so that the sky is a narrow line. The horizon to the side is meters away.

Going up into a high-rise will sometimes give a view between buildings. You might catch a narrow glimpse of Lake Ontario, the Don Valley, the expanse of city. Often, no matter how high you go, you look at what is going on in the building across the road.

From inside my house, I can see over the marsh to catch sight of the rising full moon. I can see a distant cellphone tower blinking at night. The stars of the big dipper to the north stand well above the horizon. To the south there is sky above the field.

We have to step outside to see to the west, but, out by the barn, we can see a rise in the land. Late in the day, when the sun is low in the sky, almost touching the first hay field, the sky will be touched with colour. As we walk west to see the sunset, the sun itself is hidden by the trees that mark the lane and we catch glimpses of tinted clouds. Finally, we climb to the place where the land begins to slope down, and the sun is a ball that hangs in the sky. Slowly, it moves toward the distant hill, filling the sky with color.

People talk about the Lake Huron sunsets because from the shore, the sky is open, the progress of the sun is steady, and the colours reach up and out. The sense of distance is vast. These days I drive along the bay toward Kemble, and beyond the ice there is a hazy blue. In every season, beyond the shore, beyond the islands, there is a sense of hazy distance. Sometimes there is a line where land and water meet; often I cannot make out the place where one ends and the other begins.

Years ago, I spent a few days in Manitoba, where I realized how high the sky was, how distant the horizon. These days I wonder if part of the reason I needed to get out the city was that narrowness of vision. I needed to see the horizon.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls.