Doppler's Ghost

Is there a word for the strange sensations of a new place?

I think most of us have experienced them in an unfamiliar house: the ticks, the tocks, the creaks, the croaks, the hums, even the smells.

Outdoor places have them too. The wind blows a little differently. The birds tweet unfamiliar songs. Even the clouds, which one would think would remain the same over time and space, have a delicate newness to them. Familiar things seem altered.

This phenomenon jolted me one day while taking the children to the library. My family had just moved; not far (at least in Canadian standards). I was in the town of Blairmore, AB, unbuckling the children from their car seats when it started. A passing train, a few blocks over, blew its whistle and acknowledged its presence in the town.

I am a born and raised prairie girl. I am a sucker for big skies and unending fields of green and gold. A passing train's whistle is lost to the expanses there.

Here, the sound ricochets off the mountains. The echoing, mixed with the change in pitch as the train passes by, is hauntingly beautiful: Doppler's ghost.

(For anyone not familiar with the sound; check out this Youtube video by flatcarwillie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiVBO0dIuyY

The sound in the video is from a steam engine, however it has the same effect.

This experience inspired the ink and watercolour painting below.