9 February 2018 – We’re in Stanley Park, tracing its perimeter as we walk the Seawall. A cloudy day, the water a silvery sheen but, here and there, one moment or another, a piercing pinpoint of light & colour.

The incandescent yellow mound of the sulphur terminal, for example, as we approach Prospect Point. It is across Burrard Inlet on the shores of North Vancouver, not close, but look, it draws the eye.

Very close, the reflected arc of Lion’s Gate Bridge, a broken dark scribble on the shining water. Shining, too, rectangles of bright windows in a single focal point of sunshine through drifting clouds.

A backward glance as we round Prospect Point, and that sulphur pile still pulls the eye. (No need to keep the eye instead alert for roller-bladers — we pedestrians have a designated path of our own.)

More sunshine slanting through the clouds — another momentary focal point in the seascape. This time it’s a freighter laden with containers (I see containers & I think photographer Ed Burtynsky, every time), picked out bright against the water, clouds & backdrop mountain range.

We’re around the point of land, curving back eastward toward English Bay and False Creek. Now the sun offers more than a spotlight; it offers a whole sky.

But not quite yet! We must yet pass Siwash Rock, and walk into the sunshine around that next fold in the land. Still, there it will be — the freighter is the promise: no longer a single focal point of light, but part of a larger light-bright whole.

And so it is. We round that fold of land & walk into sunshine.

Past Third Beach, past Second Beach, past English Bay (with a sideways diversion to a café) … and onto a False Creek ferry.

Next stop, the purposeful (& successful) hunt for wind chimes to suspend from my upper balcony. Come to think of it, they too are “silver & light” (even if here silhouetted black).

I see them, and hear their mellow, deep bong, as I type these words.