7 September 2023 – I’m a big fan of public benches. They’re more than a place to scroll our smartphones, they give us a chance to escape our own chattering minds.

Decades ago, I read author & conservationist Gerald Durrell’s account of his Corfu boyhood (My Family and Other Animals). He said that, very young, he discovered the way to see anything in nature was not to chase after it, but instead to sit still, be quiet, and let it come to him.

On an infinitely more modest scale, that’s how I use a bench. It’s an opportunity to sit down, and see what happens next.

For example, here in the VanDusen Botanical Garden, near the tip of Heron Lake.

Isn’t it perfect? Path behind, lake in front, and a Borne Weeping Beech dappling the sunlight overhead.

So I sit down, and wait to see what happens next.

Sound: People walk by, their voices drifting across my ears, carrying me (aurally at least) to China, Latin America, Australia, Quebec and (I think) the Philippines. A Stellar Jay swoops through, landing one tree over just long enough to be vehement about something, and then flies off.

Colour: Bright water, green leaves… and, oh, look, red as well. Right there, framed by the green. Red.

Curiosity: Up, two steps left, and a clear view across the lake.

Motivation: I’ll walk around the lake and find that tree — the one in the middle, the one I first noticed framed by green beech leaves.

Discovery. I read the plaque on the bench…

and find there is one on the tree as well.

I walk around the lake, identify that middle Red Japanese Maple, and see that it too bears a plaque.

I cannot, through the dense foliage of this maple, see the bench that started all this.

But I know it is there.

I stand one more moment, and think about the extra dimension that tree and bench dedications bring to the landscape. These invisible networks of love and memory, interlaced across time and shimmering all around us.

I sat down. And this is what happened next.