21 March 2023 – Well, not exactly eternity. Still, when you’re standing on the Camosun Bog boardwalk, admiring a whole bouquet of moss presented on a tree stump…

your mind does expand beyond calendar dates.

The very next day, still motivated to walk by newly warm (& not-raining) weather, I’m prowling westward in my Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. My eye, unbeknownst to me at the time, is firmly snagged in 2018, because I fall captive to three wall murals in the area — all created during the 2018 Vancouver Mural Festival.

First up, a building at Manitoba & West 7th, its art beaming at us from both street-facing walls, the work of Madrileno Rubén Sánchez. I’ve seen it before, I love it all over again, both the Manitoba wall as a whole…

and its details. Go ahead, spread the image, do your own prowl. Here’s one detail I particularly like: the woman paddling her canoe right down that sidewalk.

Same street corner, now facing westward along 7th, and there’s a choice of views.

You can enjoy it via a parked car window…

or take it in with your very own eyes.

Detail upon detail, including that wonderful yellow pipe in the foreground, with its question-mark of black & white smoke. And, higher up, farther along, a light bulb.

And a happy flower, rising straight from the sidewalk.

I notice that because here we are, almost spring. I begin looking for more mural sidewalk flowers. And I find them.

There’s the detail in Colorado-born artist Bunnie Reiss’ mural just around the corner on Columbia…

and the bright crocuses at gravel’s edge in the alley between 6th & 7th, on Ontario Street. (Thank you Atheana Picha, both indigenous Fijean and of the Kwantlen First Nation.)

But there’s nature down here as well — even here, soaring trees. Reminders of eternity.

On Alberta Street, I stop first to admire this quiet door, so perfectly in harmony with the sentinel trees either side…

and then I tip my head back, back & back, to let my eyes soar up into the trees.

Even in the heart of a city, you can escape the calendar.