Time’s Arrow Series
International Harvester Truck, 1939
This truck, produced at the start of World War II, is from makers of farm equipment and other vehicles. The setting, the Big Muddy badlands of Southern Saskatchewan highlight the confluence to two time lines, one geologic, the other ephemeral. The badlands are highly fragile soils where erosion reveals the strata of geologic time. The black coal seams date from the Carboniferous period long before the major petroleum deposits were created. Humanity continues to deplete the resources that favoured the development of this vehicle and sustain its modern day progeny. The steel it was made from is also part of the diminishing largesse of nature that recycling fails to fully recover. For many decades, the machinery of the past had been collected from the individual farms and shipped to scrap metal dealers. Those not worthy of recovery in this manner rust and erode with the land as time diminishes all things.