19 May 2025 – There is a big difference, I realize — as I anchor my hat — between a calm 15C and a 15C with gusts that smack you in the face.

I’m just off the bus at the edge of Stanley Park, planning a walk through the park to celebrate this holiday long weekend. (Held the Monday before 24 May, and, both officially and unofficially, a single holiday with many names.)

My plan, before the hat-anchoring, was to walk across Lost Lagoon, out to Second Beach, and then whatever. Hat now anchored, I see the virtues of a trail walk among sheltering trees instead.

So I say good-bye to Lost Lagoon, despite the attraction of this mama duck and her babies (just off the point of those rocks)…

and this Pacific Great Blue Heron, posing right next to the path…

and, instead, I pivot my footsteps onto Tatlow Walk.

I don’t usually take any of the forest trails, and how silly is that? Here’s a whole 400 Ha of western rainforest, and I stick to the Seawall. Not today!

Tatlow offers me a whole different experience. See? (Ignore “You are here” — we are in fact in the upper-right curve of Lost Lagoon, about to slice diagonally through the forest on Tatlow Walk, and emerge at Third Beach.)

Why don’t I do this more often? Thank you, wind, for blowing me inland.

There is greenery — new growth climbing all over the old…

and woodpecker activity — scavenging insects from old trees…

and colour — the rich red of the cedar itself and the lichens on the bark…

and even sound effects — the angled tree squeaks as high-level wind rubs it against the trees that support it.

In the glade where Tatlow crosses Bridle Path (scroll back to that handy map, I’ll wait…), I meet a ghost.

One of seven ghosts, the stumps of the Seven Sisters, the soaring mix of Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar that once stood here and were so popular with 19th-c visitors that they had their own dedicated trail.

Alas, by 1953…

they had to be honoured in a different way.

But the glade, like the rest of the forest, still has plenty of soaring verticals.

Side trails beguile…

but I look at the mud, and the bike ruts, and choose to stick with Tatlow.

At Stanley Park Drive, I wait for waves of holiday traffic to pass, cars as usual, but also motorcycle clusters and cyclists…

and then cross over. Within moments, here I am, about to emerge at Third Beach.

Where wind has free access, and white caps prove it.

Rocks, freighters (waiting their turn to enter the Port of Vancouver), and white caps. That’s the signature of my walk back down the Seawall.

Plus the occasional float plane silhouetted high against the clouds, snarling its way to, or from, the Flight Centre at Coal Harbour…

and crows swooping low across the beach…

and cyclists dismounting to navigate intersections with high-traffic walkways.

I take advantage of low tide, and walk the last stretch below the Seawall, down on the beach itself.

Just past park boundaries, I climb back up to Beach Avenue, Morton Park and…

a pop-up street fair. But of course. It’s a holiday weekend, isn’t it?

Quick browse in the fair, satisfying lunch on Denman Street (Indian, this time around), and a walk north on Denman, where the soaring verticals are quite different from those to be found in the park…

and, finally, a bus back home.