Aaron Paquette Journal

One Way
Mixed Media
on Paper
2007

Driving back up to the North from the dry and dusty Southern Alberta city of Medicine Hat, I found myself fading into auto-pilot at the wheel, brain registering the limited traffic as cruise control took over and I began to settle into the half-alertness of a six-hour journey. It was just as I was reaching that almost meditative state that highway drivers all know that a road sign snapped me out of my reverie. A crow swept in and landed on the corner of the black sign, feathers ruffled up in the ever-present wind of the southwestern prairies. As I sped by at 110km/hr, the bird screamed into the wind, the sound piercing through the closed windows. My breathing stopped and so, almost, did my heart.

One Way.

Whatever it means.