This morning I did something I haven't done for 50 years; I sat and looked at a framed picture that I'm sure saved my 12-year-old psyche from certain despair many years ago. This picture, and companion print, came back into my life recently when I found both in the thrift store. The story began many miles and years ago.

My family once lived in a company town in North Western Ontario. We lived there for a dozen years until one day the owners of the mill and town unceremoniously decided to close down the town - such things sometimes happened in those days. When they closed down the town my family and I moved to a nearby community about 12 miles away. Though it wasn't that far from our former place of residence, it was light years ahead in many other ways.

The town was huge, several thousand people - a city by comparison to the mill town of 200 people. This town had many stores, paved streets, stop signs and several schools. It also had round the clock traffic and noise. All this change was unsettling, and I quietly tried to adjust.

My new school was a long walk across town but I enjoyed the walk because it led across a bridge that spanned a river, which flowed from a lake by the mill town I'd recently left. Unfortunately, by the time the river reached the bridge it had lost much of its beauty. The shore was stripped of vegetation and rumour had it that raw sewage from town flowed through its veins. Still the river did come from the land where I was raised and that was comforting.

My new school was a brick building with many classrooms and a huge playground. There was a flat plain of gravel stretching towards and surrounding another nearby school. Grades 7 and 8 were taught at this school

The classes here were much different than my first seven years of education in the one room schoolhouse. Here, we took English in the homeroom then moved to other classes throughout the day. Some classes were fun. I had never taken art class before and took to it with glee. But it was in music class where my heart sank.

The music room was in a windowless downstairs room and I had no previous music training. I felt as though I were in a room full of people speaking an entirely foreign language. My mother called the music notes on the lines, "tadpoles on strings", and as I sat through the lonely hours in that room, I agreed wholeheartedly with her.

It's odd but I can't remember anything that went on in the class. I probably copied the "tadpoles on strings" into a book, or sang if we had to, but other than that I had only one pleasing diversion.

My desk sat by an inside wall and on the wall were two pictures. One picture was of a Moose making its way across a snow-covered expanse. The other picture was a Caribou about to cross a snow-covered river. For hours my eyes wandered through the wild landscapes in these pictures, my heart leapt at the thought of the wilderness surrounding these wild animals, and the drone of music class became a distant distraction. And that is how I endured music class and all the changes taking place around me.

We moved once more when the school year ended and this time, mercifully, it was back to a small town. But I never forgot those pictures and now like old friends, they have returned. And though I look at the pictures with a more analytical eye now, I still find comfort in walking my eyes across the snow, past the moose and back to the distant tree line. Back to a place where the wilderness of the heart stretches on forever.