Walking Back to the Love of a Beautiful Place

Have you ever experienced the way the light dissects leaves, noticed how a yellow daisy turns slightly green at its petal tips, or how earth shades become stronger under sunlight, strong enough to overwhelm by a bittersweet purity that feels like your past, present and future in a single glance?

Yesterday was like that. In spite of the brilliant fall sunshine,  I'm hyper aware of the proximity of the rains. They're coming. And, that means no time now to spare inside, better get outside, on day's like yesterday, this couple, caught napping in solidarity would surely agree.

So I drove to Stanley Park. First time there, since I returned to the Lower Mainland 10 months ago and that surprised me.

The route I took to get there was unusual for me.  Over the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, up the upper levels, down Capilano road hardly any traffic mid afternoon, no slowing down across the Lion's Gate Bridge which once across, a quick right hand exit deposits into lushness, stops quickly and delivers Prospect Point. A freighter slides below, glides so wide and tall, might as well be a toy boat taking up the whole bathtub; float planes trade places with ravens.

I parked the car near that pool. Is it Second or Third Beach? I should know that by now.  I set off on a walk that I've done countless times before, when I lived on the park's rim, and as I began to walk it didn't take long before I began to feel fantastic. I was smiling, really smiling, inside even, and I realized how few people really smile because I was looking at them, directly into their faces, even when they were avoiding my gaze, which was mostly. Feeling that good exaggerated the contrast of how I've been feeling lately and how hard my body has been trying to catch my attention; to communicate what's missing.

Here, I must drive for miles to find a place to wander where the trees and the grass and the flowers feel like company. Too much inside, alone, just me and my computer screen, without daily wandering in beauty, observing how the shadows dance across a tree trunk, the wind tickles the surface of the ocean or how waves bursts throwing up silent explosions of beaded gauntlets. No stopping to pick up a shell or a black rock on a beach, and really examining them before gently placing them back down again or absentmindedly tossing it, contented.

You and I are not the only living things capable of changing each other. Natural surroundings can do that as deeply; and the loss of that affects the heart every bit as much as any other lost love now gone.

That's some of what I was thinking yesterday as I walked.

Morning Walk

I don't have much to say these days. I was up early and felt like taking photographs so I left the house at 7:00 am and before I knew it I'd walked around the entire seawall. I really didn't see all that much to photograph that I wanted to photograph. Some days are like that. It is however fantastic to be in the park at that time. Nothing calls forth gratitude more quickly than a walk in the park.

Best Kept Stanley Park Secret

Let me share with you what may be a little known secret about the Stanley Park Seawall.

Regardless of whether you're riding a bike, rollerblading or walking, the very best time to be on the seawall, especially if you are not into crowds, is after 6:30 pm on a weeknight. This is true in spring, early fall, and in the height of summer.

At this quiet time of night you can lose yourself in your thoughts and the scenery. You can put away any fears that someone will be riding towards you even though there is only one way that you are supposed to ride around the seawall for safety sake and that is counterclockwise.

On a sunny evening, the light hits the water to produce a breath-taking show just past the Lions Gate Bridge. Sometimes, more often than not near Lumberman's Arch a shiny, black seal's head will catch your attention because the light will gleam off its wetness as it pops up.

At this time of night there is less chance that a pedestrian will be on the bike path, or that hordes of rollerbladers and other bikers will be on it so that when you are being passed on the very narrow parts you must balance, like on a tightrope, and keep your bike very, very straight so as not to take a fall. This is especially true near Siwash Rock.

And, while I'm on the topic of biking, yesterday I rode on the seawall from English Bay to Granville Island and I could have kept right on going to Jericho Beach and out to UBC. The fact that you can stay on a path through Stanley Park, past English Bay, skirt Yaletown, and keep on going past the dragonboaters in False Creek near Science World and onto Granville Island is just fantastic.

Oh, and one more tip. I noticed that for a mere $5 you can feel what it's like to be on a dragonboat team through a program called PaddlesUp. Sign up south of Science World where the dragonboat trailers are located. It looked as if this experience is only available to the general public on Sunday afternoons at 2pm.

In case you were thinking of coming down into the park this weekend, you might want to park elsewhere. It's the Vancouver BG Triathlon World Championships and English Bay will be a zoo. But, I caught it last year and it's pretty cool to see some world class triathletes (Simon Whitfield) flying by on their bikes.

But, as usual, I digress.

Back to the bike riding. If at any time, you are feeling somewhat disillusioned by the high cost of living in Vancouver, you should get on a bike and ride this route and you will then finish the ride with a renewed sense of wonderment at what a beautiful city it is indeed! Sometimes when you've lived here your entire life, you can get rather complacent about its natural beauty at times. In fact, I would recommend this bike route as a must-have, authentic Vancouver experience to any tourist who's capable of riding a bike.

When I cycled past the Olympic Village that is under construction on the SouthEast side of False Creek, I could almost feel a sense of the anticipation and excitement that will overtake the city for two weeks in 2010.

Yes, I know. It's really almost impossible to imagine that such a thought actually entered my consciousness, but it did. That's what biking will do for you. Must be the endorphins.

Running Past Eye Candy

Question? How do you know when you've become a "real" runner?
Answer! You have an injury! You come home and you wrap your ankle in ice and put the tensor bandage around it. Achilles. Ouch!

The 5km clinic hasn't been as much fun as "Learn to Run" was partly because our group has dwindled to three of us (plus two-year-old Hanna).

Hanna doesn't run. She'd REALLY slow us down, even more than we slow ourselves down. Jen pushes her in one of those running strollers. And, then our leader, Carol, who was training for something called "The Goofy" which is an endurance race hosted at Disneyworld in Florida (and IMHO sounds like a very unhealthy endeavor considering that it's a marathon immediately followed by a half-marathon) suffered an injury that has completely sidelined her.

So, we've been running with Pam who was recovering from a very bad bout of the flu this past winter and that really cut into her training. I can't help but notice that runners, like seniors, can spend a lot of time talking about their physical ailments.

One of the really great things about running in a group is being able to go into the trails in Stanley Park. If I was running alone, I wouldn't do that. It's so green and quiet and beautiful and you get to notice things like a blue heron standing in the middle of Beaver Lake eating a poor little frog (gulp). You get to see baby ducks and swans, nesting. The air seems fresher inside the trails and it's softer running on trail than cement. You get to be reminded that you are one of the luckiest people on the planet because you live in a beautiful place where Stanley Park is your backyard a mere 3 minute walk down the street and your middle-aging body is actually running through it like you were a kid again.

One of the women who runs with us is from Costa Rica. She's doing a post doctorate fellowship and she's doing her fellowship as a pediatrician at Children's Hospital. She's everything you would hope for in terms of personal qualities in a doctor who looks after sick kids. She's REALLY warm and nice. She greets you with a hug every time. I'm just guessing that she's in her early 30s.

She looks like a runner: Tall, thin, long legs. In fact, she's beautiful. And, English, is of course, not her first language which, combined with her accent, makes the way she puts sentences together extremely charming.

We've been running together for four months now and we've gotten to know a little bit about each other. I know she has a boyfriend and he lives in Spain and he's coming to visit in August. If Wednesday's run was any indication, his arrival can't happen soon enough.

Last week, we were nearing the end of our 5K run. We'd gone along Lost Lagoon, up past the Rose Garden towards Beaver Lake. We then left Beaver Lake halfway around it and headed onto Ravine trail that leads out onto the Seawall. Then, we ran south along the Wall all the way back to the Vancouver Rowing Club.

As we were nearing the end of our run, Hazel, the Costa Rican, lets out this little spontaneous yelp as if someone had just come up behind her and tickled her or scared her. I looked and this really good-looking guy had just ran past us in the other direction.

It was as if, in shock, the air just came out of her and she emitted this noise involuntarily. When she did that, we all turned around to look and he turned around at the same time and it was really funny in a "you had to be there" kind of way.

That's life in Vancouver. It happens so rarely - seeing a specimen like that - that it's like being on the receiving end of an unexpected jolt from a defibrillator.

So. The moral of this story? There is still some straight eyecandy here afterall!!