If some countries have too much history, we have too much

Host: The wind howled through the prairie night, dragging a veil of dust across the two-lane highway that disappeared into the flat horizon. The sky, vast and merciless, seemed to press down on the earth, swallowing the sound of everything.

An old truck stop café, its neon sign flickering, stood alone by the road — the last light for miles. Inside, the air was thick with smoke, diesel, and the faint scent of coffee burnt hours ago.

At a corner booth sat Jack and Jeeny, their faces half-lit by a flickering bulb. The window beside them rattled in the wind, and the prairie beyond stretched out — an endless map of nothing and everything.

Jeeny: (tracing her finger along a weathered atlas on the table) “If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography. Mackenzie King said that. I think he meant it as a joke. But it’s not, is it? It’s the most tragic truth about us.”

Jack: (sipping his coffee, voice low, almost grating) “Tragic? No. It’s freedom. History ties you down — geography lets you breathe. Some countries are haunted by the past; we’re haunted by the distance.”

Host: The lights flickered, and the coffee machine hissed like a snake in its sleep. Outside, a truck roared by, its headlights cutting through the dark like a brief thought that vanishes before you grasp it.

Jeeny: “You call that freedom? Empty highways, forgotten towns, lives stretched so thin you can’t even hear each other anymore. That’s not freedom, Jack — that’s isolation.”

Jack: “It’s perspective. You stand in the middle of this nothing, and you realize how small you are. That’s a kind of truth no history can give you.”

Host: His grey eyes caught the reflection of the window — the prairie night staring back. Jeeny leaned closer, her brown eyes soft but unyielding, her voice steady like a confession wrapped in care.

Jeeny: “But without history, what anchors you? Geography can tell you where you are — but not who you are.”

Jack: “History tells you who you were told to be. Geography tells you who you are when the noise stops.”

Host: The wind banged against the window, a ghost trying to get in. The sign outside buzzed, the “O” in “OPEN” flickering like a failing memory.

Jeeny: “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve always been moving. You like the road because it means you don’t have to stay anywhere long enough to remember.”

Jack: (half-smiling, half-wounded) “And you like staying because it makes you believe time can be tamed.”

Host: The silence between them was like a desert, vast and unbroken. Somewhere in the distance, a train horn echoed — low, mournful, ancient.

Jeeny: “You think the past is a burden. I think it’s a map — without it, geography is just emptiness. People need roots, Jack. They need memory.”

Jack: “Roots can strangle. History traps people in graves they never dug. Look at Europe — centuries of revenge passed down like heirlooms. You call that identity? I call it suffocation.”

Jeeny: “And what do you call this?” (gestures to the window) “Miles and miles of empty land. Forgotten names, erased voices. No stories left to haunt us, because no one stayed long enough to write them.”

Host: The rain began, sharp and slanting, tracing silver lines down the glass. It turned the night into a moving painting, restless and infinite.

Jack: “You’re romanticizing ghosts again. Some places don’t need stories, Jeeny. They need silence. Space. We’ve built too much noise into the world. Maybe the prairie got it right — it keeps its mouth shut.”

Jeeny: “But even silence has memory. The wind remembers the footsteps, the soil remembers the bones. The geography you worship — it carries its own kind of history. It just doesn’t speak in words.”

Host: Jeeny’s voice softened, but her eyes shone like flames in glass. Jack stared out at the dark, where the horizon swallowed the stars.

Jack: “You ever notice how people from countries full of history — Italy, Greece, Egypt — they talk like they’re living in museums? Everything they do is measured against what once was. You can’t breathe in that kind of past.”

Jeeny: “And yet their children grow up knowing who they are. They have stories, lineage, continuity. They belong to something larger than themselves. That’s not suffocation, Jack — that’s connection.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked, its second hand stuttering. The radio crackled to life with an old folk song about home and distance, and the irony hung thick in the air.

Jack: “You know what I think? Geography made us forget how to remember. We’re too spread out, too far apart. We built a nation on space — and space doesn’t tell stories. It erases them.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe it’s waiting for us to listen. Maybe geography isn’t emptiness — maybe it’s a blank page, waiting for us to write something worth remembering.”

Host: Her words lingered, gentle yet defiant. The rain softened, and the light flickered as if agreeing. Jack looked down at the atlas — a map of lines, rivers, borders — then back at her.

Jack: “You think we can fill it with meaning?”

Jeeny: “We already have. Every town, every fence, every graveyard. Geography is history in disguise.”

Host: Jack ran a finger across the map, stopping on the empty space between two towns.

Jack: “And what about the spaces in between?”

Jeeny: “That’s where we begin again.”

Host: Outside, the rain stopped, leaving the world slick and glistening, like a new layer of skin over old scars. The neon sign steadied, glowing a weak but stubborn blue.

Jack leaned back, his voice lower now, softer, almost human.

Jack: “You know, when I was a kid, we used to drive for hours — no radio, no talking. Just the sound of wind and wheels. I thought the land was empty then. But now… maybe it was talking, and I didn’t understand the language.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “That’s the first step, Jack — realizing geography speaks. You just have to learn how to listen.”

Host: The café lights dimmed, and the night outside shimmered, endless and forgiving. The world stretched, not as a void, but as a story still unfolding — written not in ink, but in rivers and ridgelines, in wind and stone.

Jeeny gathered the atlas, closing it gently as if tucking a child into sleep.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Mackenzie King meant — that some nations drown in their history, and others are still waiting to find one.”

Jack: (quietly) “And we’re somewhere in between — too much land, not enough memory.”

Host: The truck stop clock struck midnight, its echo filling the silence like the final word of an unfinished sentence. Outside, the sky cleared, revealing a vast, impossible spread of stars — history’s geography, written in light.

The two of them sat in the glow — two tiny figures in an ocean of space — and for the first time, the emptiness around them didn’t feel empty at all. It felt alive — like a story too large for paper, but still waiting to be told.