The path to Barry Wagstaff goes straight, always straight. It goes past parched fields, abandoned farms, rusty wrecked cars, through settlements that hardly anyone knows. At some point after what feels like an eternity, a gravel road branches off into a hamlet called Sedalia. Only 25 people still live there, there is a post office, a shop, crooked houses and barns.
Sedalia lies east of an unmarked spot on the prairie where highways 886 and 314 meet, somewhere in the middle of the Canadian Badlands, halfway between the cities of Calgary and Saskatoon. It's almost 400 kilometers in both directions, but it feels further. The sky seems endless and the horizon just doesn't want to get any closer.
For Barry Wagstaff, it's home.
