BC Sketches

I smile each time the flight attendant makes her announcements in French.  I'd forgotten that Canada is bilingual.  Interesting how it, and the American accented English, and the language of the country from which we ascended, form a tryptich of the continents of the Northern Hemisphere...

...interesting too to be descending into a city with unknown geographical landmarks and without any recognizable features.  Upon takeoff a week later, that would no longer be the case....

...walking through the forests of the Kootenays, seeing impossible Japanese features in the landscape -- shittake growing beneath pyramids of oak; jizo statues masquerading as mere stones...

...sitting in the bar of the Ainsworthy Hot Springs, looking down upon the faces sliding by, trying to envision the lives that animate them...

...creating an entire life as lived in Nelson, a life that exists nowhere but in my imagination...

...it isn't the chill in the air, but the shape that the clouds take that remind one that autumn is drawing in...
 
...from the air, bare patches visible in the highest reaches of the hills.  I had thought that this was a courtesy of the logging companies, doing their dirty work high above the eyes of man.  I am later reminded that this is actually because that's the only place where the valuable old growth forests remain.   In another decade or so, they too will be gone...

...the voice of the seagull a reminder that the sea is nearby. The gulls take no notice, pecking at the sand...

...on Vancouver's waterfront, a gay couple walks by hand in hand, one wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the US  flag.  A man climbs from the sloop that is his home, moored just offshore.  He climbs into a rowboat and makes his way toward shore, to run errands, do the shopping, or perhaps this is his commute.  The aquabus putt-putts past, looking like a bathtoy.  Further along, the shore opens to become seaside, complete with the usual bicyclists and rollerbladers, most of the women in bikinis, the men bare chested. Out on the horizon the tankers are lined up, carrying their black gold down from ports further north.  An attracted women kayaks along the shore, slowing to investigate a sunbathing sea-lion...  

...I cut inland again at Stanley Park, along the chainshops and tourists of Robson. Along its length are seven Starbucks.  Here too are the hoods and the homeless.  One Asian girl walks a wide berth over a man sleeping on the curb...

...and I'm aloft again, eyes following the chain of islands stretching north, beckoning...



On the turntable:  X, "More Fun in the New World"
On the nighttable:  Robert MacFarlane, "The Old Ways"