20 January 2025 – We’re in a cold snap. Nothing like the extremes back East, just temperatures hovering below/above zero from night to day — low enough to set the hoar frost blooming early each morning.
Including along the Shoreline Trail, the pretty little trail in Port Moody that runs between Rocky Point Park and Old Orchard Park, cupping the eastern end of Burrard Inlet as it goes.
As I wait for my companion outside the SkyTrain station, I realize the oak leaf on the artwork at my feet and my own fingertips are in agreement: there’s a bite in the air.
But it dances through a blazing bright sky, and it is magical.
Hoar frost sparkles on the boardwalk across a marshy inlet…
encircles an ice-rimmed pond…
and sweeps across the entire marshland, right to the creek whose waters steam gently in the sun.
We cross mudflats on this rebuilt boardwalk, and agree it is much safer and more accessible than its wonky predecessor and is therefore A Very Good Thing — but also agree we miss the charm of that predecessor.
Then we quite rightly stop being such ingrates, and settle down to enjoy ourselves.
A waterfront blind farther along offers a chance to watch wildlife unobserved…
though at the moment we see only the stumps of old pilings, remnants of the McNair Cedar Mill that once operated here.
I’ve visited the mill site on previous Trail walks; tide is low enough to allow us to explore it today as well.
Only later online do I both learn the name of the mill and also see this 1925 photograph of the mill in operation. (Thank you Tessa Trethewey, for posting this photo on the I Love Port Moody blog on April 25 last year.)
Before we rejoin the Trail, I stop to admire this ziggurat, meticulously constructed from old mill bricks still lying around on-site. (I think for a moment, by ricochet, of the ephemeral clean-fill sculptures created out on Toronto’s Leslie Spit, by visitors who celebrate what lies to hand.)
Back on the Trail, what we have to hand is a collection of nature’s own tree-sculptures.
Companion burls high up one trunk…
and a whole lot of winter moss. An old scar, cushioned in moss, for example…
great rounded folds of bark rising from a mossy base…
and a moss-splattered tree that stands politely to one side as we look across reeds and marshes, across Burrard Inlet itself, to the mountains and distant snow peaks.
Warmed by the growing strength of the sun and also our own exertions, we decide we have more than earned lunch.
We retrace our steps, greeting hikers and patting dogs as we go, and settle into generous servings of Mexican comfort food. Our cheerful waitress, a rose tattoo peeping out from under her left cuff, says it is the perfect day to walk the Shoreline Trail.
9 January 2025 — Current events flip my mind back 130 years, to an 1895 Punch cartoon, by Sir John Tenniel.
Master Johnny Bull asks, “Monroe Doctrine? What is the Monroe Doctrine?”
Master Jonathan (aka James Monroe) answers: “Wa-al — Guess it’s that everything everywhere belongs to us.”
In his December 2, 1823 address to Congress, President James Monroe articulated what was to be United States policy concerning the rest of the Americas.
“By the mid-1800s” — says the Office of the Historian, in its series Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations — “Monroe’s declaration, combined with the ideas of Manifest Destiny, provided precedent and support for U.S. expansion on the American continent…”
18 November 2024 – This weekend — for the 28th year — was the annual Eastside Culture Crawl. I take advantage of Sunday’s better weather (merely iffy, as opposed to torrential) to join in.
I’ll visit studios like this one…
but mostly, as seems to be my personal Crawl tradition, I’ll just go for a big old walk. And visit some studios along the way.
When I cross 2nd Avenue, northbound on Scotia Street…
flaming beech trees welcome me to official Crawl territory: it runs from the waterfront farther north to right here, 2nd Avenue. (And, east-west, from Victoria Drive to Columbia Street.)
Also part of my personal tradition: my first visit is always to the bustling Arts Factory on Industrial Avenue, but before that — just to get in the mood — I loop my way through the False Creek Flats, taking in their evolving mix of new facilities and old warehouses as I go.
Streets in here have helpful names. Western Street runs up/down the Flats’ western boundary; Station Street to the east runs to the train station; and they are connected, you’ve guessed it, by Southern, Central and Northern streets, in the appropriate geographic order. North of Northern lies Terminal, and beyond that, Industrial.
I pass one of my all-time favourite rusty warehouses at the corner of Southern and Western, now with a gleaming new high-ish rise in the background…
but I’m even more taken by this tear-drop puddle reflecting the warehouse back at me, as I round the corner to head north on Western.
A huge stump marks the corner of Western and Northern. The building looks more derelict every year, yet it is still in operation, as its grumpy shipping-receiving notice makes clear.
After my visit to the Arts Factory, I double back west to Main Street. This makes no logistical sense at all!
It’s the most perversely roundabout way possible to get to Gore Avenue, which houses the three studios I’ve decided to visit this year — but, hey, I’m out for a walk, right? The rounder-about it gets, the better.
And I’m glad for my few blocks on Main. They take me past something that may look bleak, but deserves respect.
Yes, it’s behind chain-link fence and yes, it is November-dreary. But it is also a seasonal community garden, here at the corner of Milross, and it bears our local Yarn Bomber’s tribute of a crochet heart — recognition of the resilience of people doing what they can, in a tough context.
Back east along Prior, heading for the end of the block where I will turn north on Gore. I plan to scoot right along, but I’m stopped by this Mexican cervecería, just past Hogan’s Alley.
A moment for a giggle, and then eastward-ho to the corner of Gore Avenue, with the venerable Hunnybee Bruncheonette [sic] on the left and equally venerable Strathcona homes on the right.
I’ve walked along Gore on other occasions, but it’s always been the ground-level shops that caught my attention — I’ve never thought who might be doing what, higher up in these old buildings. Today, I start to find out.
First target: Godzilla Studios, where one workshop — Street & Saddle — will be open to visitors. Once inside, once upstairs, I’m distracted en route by the instructions I see through an open washroom door over the waste paper bin.
Politeness seems to work! The bin is full to the brim, but the floor is clean.
On down the hall to Street & Saddle, a warm, welcoming and very impressive workshop of cheerful people and good clothing. Good business practices, too, as I learn from this sign on a counter top:
Isn’t that the best? Each year, their little shop keeps a whole pony’s-weight of fabric out of landfill.
Back down the stairs, out the door, on up the street to the Pot Spot Studio.
A word about stairs. Stairs literally come with art-crawl territory, since studios are usually located in the higher reaches of their respective buildings. Savvy artists, like these Pot Spot folk, make sure you know which stairs to climb…
and then give you a bonus.
Turn the corner to climb those red-arrowed stairs…
and a serpent leads the way.
As the potter at this top level studio wraps some purchases for other visitors, I hear a bit of his backstory: from his Russian homeland, to art school in Jerusalem, to — one year ago — Vancouver. I think of the losses, the struggles, the terrible choices that must be locked up in that chronology, and tell him I wish him well in his new life. His eyes soften, he nods acknowledgment.
North again on Gore, on to the eponymous Gore Studio, can’t miss it, just follow the sign for Kim Hung Noodles. (It’s the doorway I teased you with, at the start of this post.)
In, and up.
Again up.
And the invitation to go on up yet again. Again.
I’m not sure what that is! A multi-coloured toilet roll? An aerosol paint can? Doesn’t matter; It’s of a piece with the fantasy-land all around.
I find myself taking photos for some enchanted visitors who are struggling with their selfie technique, then do my own tour of the wonders, and then leave. Back down all those stairs, back out onto Gore Avenue.
With a last glance at that impressive building, noodle ghosts and all…
I walk past the Himalayan restaurant next door…
past the gloriously pungent Chinese market spilling out over the sidewalk…
and finally take myself back out to Main Street, and a bus ride home.
16 October 2024 – There’s “boring old Clock Time,” as I observed in my post of 13 July, and then there’s Crow Time — an infinitely more enjoyable way to measure the changing length of day. This means I can determine dawn-to-dusk by looking up the stats, or by simply looking out my window.
Crows leave their Burnaby roost for Vancouver roughly at dawn, and return from Vancouver to their roost roughly at dusk.
When I wrote about all this in mid-July, the afternoon commute passed my window at around 9:30 pm.
30 September 2024 – I expect lots of water, given my general plan for the day, but I do not expect a torrent of words. Yet, late in my walk, there it is: “a slow wet meander…” of words, albeit one closely allied with yet more water.
You’ll see.
It all starts when I hop off the westbound #19 bus, right there at the Georgia St. entrance to Stanley Park, with the waters of Coal Harbour visible on my right, and my immediate target, Lost Lagoon, not yet visible at all.
What is visible, is the 2010 sculpture by Rodney Graham, Aerodynamic Forms in Space, that marks this park boundary. Truth is, I like disaggregated bits of it better than the sculpture as a whole. This bit, for example.
I salute it, and then slide on by, down the steps, under the underpass, and onto the city-side path around the Lagoon. The path soon winds close to the water…
and offers Park and distant mountain views northward across the Lagoon…
close-ups of exotic ducks (un-exotically named Wood Duck)…
some Lost Rivulets, off-set from the Lagoon…
and a definitely Lost Footbridge…
which is even more drowned and inaccessible on the far side than it is right there.
Pretty soon I am exactly where the “You are here” bubble says I am…
namely, just steps from the Seawall at Second Beach.
The tide is wonderfully low.
Like many others, I leave the Seawall and walk right out to water’s edge. In places it is rock-strewn…
and, elsewhere, it offers long stretches of firm, wet sand.
Out there, orange-hulled freighters awaiting their turn to carry on down to the Port; here on shore, orange-shirted girls running into the waves.
The scene is happy, and there is an important message of hope and optimism in these shirts, but they commemorate something dreadful and dark: the abuses of the Indian [sic] Residential School System. These abuses battered the children physically and emotionally and, in more than 4,000 documented cases (2021 stats), caused their death. In 2015 the non-profit Orange Shirt Society was formed in Williams Lake, B.C., and began marketing tees that proclaim “the enduring truth that EVERY CHILD MATTERS, every day and everywhere.”
The inclusivity of the slogan invited, and has won, widespread acceptance. You now see the shirts on people of every ethnicity, of every age, and as every-day apparel. Today the shirts are especially appropriate. Today, 30 September, is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to honour “the children who never returned home and survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.”
All of that is now part of all of us, as it should be. I take it with me as I continue my walk.
On toward English Bay, past more sand and rocks and squealing children and tail-wagging dogs and, up there on separate Seawall tracks, cyclists and pedestrians. Finally, I head for the Seawall myself. I am ready for a city component to this walk and, I realize, more than ready for something to eat.
Out to Beach Avenue, with the A-Maze-ing Laughter sculptures in Morton Park in the middle distance, and Doug Coupland’s soaring mural on a refurbished vintage apartment tower just beyond to the right, and, closer than all that and of more immediate interest to me…
the red & white striped awnings of a hot dog stand.
Hot dog or Bavarian Smokie, it’s all 100% Alberta beef, says the hand-lettered signage, and the Calgary Girl in me nods approval. I eat my Smokie on the beach, and then…
turn down Denman St. for a latte in Delaney’s Coffee House. My front-window seat gives me the inspiring view of this pigtailed cyclist, surely damn near my own age, who is not even breathing hard as she locks up her bicycle.
Next comes a zig-zag through West End Vancouver: I’ve had water & nature, now for pavement & city. A few blocks on Denman, then right turn onto Comox and I stomp right along — until I get to Broughton.
I’ve walked Comox before, I’ve passed this building before and I’ve noticed the thumping great sculpture at the street corner before: Triumph of the Technocrat (Reece Terris). What I’ve never noticed is the curling channel of water along Comox that connects with the sculpture…
and, especially, the words incised into the channel wall.
Thanks to an article and overhead photo in The Source (issue 27 Jan – 10 Feb 2015), I can not only show you the entire channel with its pool at one end and Terris sculpture at the other…
I can also tell you the channel is the work of Vancouver landscape architects Durante Kreuk, and the text is by Vancouver artist Greg Snider.
Snider’s creation is a whole bravura torrent of words, and I want it! So I inch my way along the channel, taking pictures as I go, just in case the text is not available online.
And it is not. Or, not that I can find. So here we go, I am about to put it online — all but the bits I couldn’t catch because they are obscured by particularly vigorous lavender bushes. You’re not word-crazy? Skip the next paragraph. You are word-crazy? Settle in for the ride.
“A slow wet meander along stoned plaza of frenetic urban structure toward the demiurge of public art, the fiscal trace of exacting development moving with pythagorean acuity the eart [lavender bush…] objects of our collective culture through the bureau of civic demand, the spirit of heavenly smoke spirals from the burnt wood of transcendent aspiration over the long marsh of pantheistic decor as the seemly secular rises around us and art sluices down a crafty pipe — sleepy second [more lavender bush…] arch, techtonic upscaled for perpetuity’s long view (fifty years max) in a device for reflection called triumph of the technocrat.”
My own slow, not-wet meander now complete, I walk on. I pause one last moment on Comox, just before I turn onto Bute, for a cheerful and timely bit of sidewalk art.
Buoyed by that, I carry on — north & east, east & north — to Burrard & West Pender, where I catch a # 19 bus, and ride on home.
22 September 2024 – Time & place. Time & places. Places, through time.
Two recent days, that have me noticing the play of time across place.
Friday, I’m walking back along north-shore False Creek after a downtown lunch with a friend. I stop to read one of the railings that mark a stretch of informational glass & metal way-stations near Coopers Park.
“Look across the water,” it says, so I do. Eastward across the smooth, bright water alive with pleasure boats, ferry boats and a couple paddling their kayak.
This is 2024 False Creek, much transformed over the millennia.
Coast Salish people once fished here, in clean waters…
but the 19th c. brought sawmills, small port operations and, after the 1887 arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a booming demand for railway-related services and support. The shoreline and waters were very busy…
with piles of materials and with hand labour…
but the waters were no longer so clean.
Incised words on metal panels remind us of the range of activities, of purposes, of people, across all that time.
Next big transformation: the mid-20th c. shift in industrial patterns and the post-Expo ’86 drive to restore and repurpose False Creek. Today it is recreational, and residential, and the waters are a whole lot healthier than they used to be.
I learn more about all this the very next day. Saturday morning, I am once again on the north shore of False Creek, freshly delivered to the Yaletown Dock by ferry, to join a downtown walking tour run by the AFBC (Architecture Foundation of British Columbia).
We pass the now-repurposed CPR roundhouse and walk through adjacent Yaletown, named for the small BC community where the CPR first had its construction equipment & repair shops, before relocating work to the more convenient Vancouver location.
Spare, functional Victorian industrial architecture still lines several Mainland Street blocks. The buildings now host restaurants, condos, artisan boutiques, and design and other creative small firms — but their Victorian bones still show.
Some of these structures are rightly celebrated by their current owners/tenants — for example, by Engels & Volker, whose website honours the history of this elegant former factory and warehouse at 1152 Mainland, built in 1912.
We walk on, our group weaving its way past other examples of old made new, and also of ghosts-of-old replaced by new. Layers of time, laid upon place.
Late in the tour, we stand under the canopy of Telus Garden which, when it opened in 2015, had brought a whole downtown block into the mixed-use trend then gathering civic strength.
It was a project born of love as well as commerce: both men native Torontonians, and both grateful to the AGO because, modest as it was at the time, it introduced each of them to art and helped shape both their lives.
The AGO did a lot for me as well. As a volunteer I spent many hours in its rooms, soaking up the art and learning about things. Like glulam.
(You wondered where I was going with this, didn’t you!)
The soaring Galleria Italia, stretching 450 feet along Dundas Street, is a vaulted dance of glued laminated Douglas fir and glass.
I always loved doing a shift out on the Galleria Italia, seeing — and hearing — visitors’ reactions when they first stepped into the space. Adults politely gasped. Schoolchildren on tour, especially when coached by their guide, agreed it looked like an overturned canoe. (Though one little girl was having none of that. “It’s an armadillo,” she announced firmly.)
My favourite reaction? The little boy who barrelled through the doors well ahead of his mother. He screeched to a halt, swivelled his head in stunned amazement and then, just as his mother caught up with him, leapt in the air, arms flung high. “WOW!” he yelled, his fists punching the air.
7 September 2024 – It’s suddenly hot — so much for the pivot to autumn! — and I decide to go chill with the Dude, in Dude Chilling Park. As you probably know, I’ve done it before. Today, I want to do it again, and for the same reason.
Half an hour, I tell myself: half an hour on a bench, to share once again the pulse of this little neighbourhood park with no amenities but so much community.
One amenity: the Michael Dennis bronze statue…
whose appearance gave rise to the nickname for both the statue (officially, Reclining Figure) and the park itself (officially, Guelph Park).
I find a bench in the shade, with the street to my back, a breeze in my face and a clear view across the little square of grass that constitutes the park.
I sit. I watch all the quiet ways that this park, and this community, engage.
Tattoo Sleeve, hurling a frisbee again and again for her wildly happy little dog
Book Lady, cross-legged on her blanket in the sun, her spine admirably straight
Vape & the Baseball Cap, lugging their basket to the one table on the grass, setting out their picnic while their dog nudges hopefully for some ball-throwing
Stroller Mum, in the shade on the far side of the park, over by the Dude’s feet, spending time with both her baby and her book
Gossip Guys, laughing & fist-bumping over whatever stories they’re telling each other close to the Dude’s shoulder
Labrador Man, whose arrival with a Golden Lab sets off a whole round of dog dynamics: dogs of varying sizes & loyalties inspecting each other, inspecting each other’s frisbees, checking if perhaps any other dog wants to play Run In Crazy Circles (and some do)
It’s a whole lot of nothing, isn’t it? It’s just nothing.
It’s also everything, I think. Quiet pleasure in simple actions, simple interactions.
{Later, I will cross paths with a neighbour, who tells me his very small, and very old & frail, dog likes this park: “The dogs are always friendly.”)
I rise from my bench. I only then notice the plaque…
and realize that I have not been sitting here alone.
20 May 2024 – Three days of a holiday weekend; three outings; three images for each.
Friday, Sunset Beach, English Bay Seawall
We’re walking the Seawall along English Bay toward Stanley Park and stop — as always! — to admire Berard Venet’s Vancouver Biennale sculpture” 217.5 Arc X 13.
Thirteen arcs of unpainted corten steel, each curved, as the title explains, to 217.5 degrees. Entirely static, endlessly dynamic, always welcoming.
We watch this little girl explore the sculpture…
and then follow her lead, offering those 217.5° arcs our own 360° tribute.
By now the sculpture, acquired in 2007, fully illustrates artist Venet’s point re his choice of material:
unpainted, the steel “facilitates an interaction with the natural elements.”
At their centre, the arcs form an embrace. At their tips…
a continuing dance of call and response.
Sunday, outside Engine 374 Pavilion, Roundhouse Community Centre
I learned about this event during my recent crosstown walk on Davie Street, and here I am, happy to join the anniversary celebrations. On 23 May, 1887, steam engine 374 pulled the first scheduled transcontinental train past Port Moody, following the new track extension all the way to Vancouver. “Ocean to ocean,” at last.
The rest of the year, CPR Engine 374 sits inside her protective pavilion. But! Once a year! Once a year, on the anniversary of that first arrival, she struts her stuff outdoors.
Oh, she gleams.
All black and white and powerful moving parts…
and shining brass and dates and tiny details…
and lots and lots and lots of live steam.
Monday, Waterfront Esplanade, New Westminster
A wonderful long walk along this stretch of the Fraser River, at very low tide.
The intricate world of mud flats, plus the occasional tree trunk…
and old pier stumps and scavenging crows…
and… and…
a reminder that trains are still part of this country’s lifeblood.
Leaving the Esplanade for downtown New West takes only a moment — only the moment needed to cross one street. But that moment becomes many, many moments when we all have to wait while a thumping great tri-continental freight train (from Mexico on up) claims its right of way.
9 April 2024 – A post title borrowed from a specific sculpture (you’ll see), but broadly applicable to pretty well everything else (as you’ll also see).
First, and more precisely: Eyes on the chain link. Two days ago I’m looping south-east of home, my attention caught by the bold line of graphics visible through chain link fence on East Broadway near Fraser.
Curiosity pulls me around the corner, into the lane, and onto that big rectangle of gravel. Bright graphics all right, but otherwise? One park bench, one dog bowl, no dogs, and one crow, who promptly flies away. That’s it. Yet a neat sign on the gate has the gall to declare this the Broadway & Fraser Dog Garden.
Please! I curl my lip. Later, online, I visit the Dog Garden website, discover a group called Community Garden Builders “transform vacant properties into temporary dog parks” … and uncurl my lip. I invite you to do the same.
Tail end (!!! unintended pun, but I’m gonna leave it) of that walk, I’m passing the mesh fence that keeps Guelph Park tennis balls inside the City courts, where they belong. A player has just stooped to retrieve one, but that’s not what I notice.
See? Our local yarn bomber has branched out. Not just crochet hearts…
but tassel hearts as well.
And now, my friends, the magic of the Historical Present Tense swoops us past yesterday’s rain into today’s bright sunshine. More streets to be walked. More places for my feet to lead my eyes.
Starting in a near-by alley at East 5th, where a whole passel of City workers are clustered around that venerable H-frame hydro pole.
I am relieved to learn that (A) while it is terminally non-functioning, (B) it will be replaced by another H-frame, not by some sleek 21st-c. interloper.
I’m still gleeful with that bit of news as I turn down another alley en route False Creek, and try for a more interesting way to look at Alex Stewart’s 2023 VMF mural, Vibrance Overgrown.
It dominates the alley side of a snazzy new eco-conscious build on East 4th and, viewed straight on… ummm…. I find it boring. Well-executed and bright, but no better than decorative.
Then I stop being cranky, lean into the wall, and look straight up.
Well, that’s more fun, and I resolve to spend more time looking for odd angles.
Next opportunity arises quickly in yet another alley — more properly, in the developer-groomed pathway between condo complexes close to the south-east end of False Creek. We’re in the area’s old industrial/railway footprint, so visual/verbal references abound. For example, in the street name just before me: Pullman Porter Street.
Right here, next to the water feature signposted as private property, I once again enjoy Eyes on the Street. The plaque tells me that the two forms in this 2018 installation by Marie Khouri & Charlotte Wall “mirror themselves & their surroundings,” and inspire us to think of our neighbours, ourselves and our surroundings, and to “consider the beauty of their interconnectedness.”
I go close. The form before me does mirror its surroundings…
and I find that I do then spend a moment considering the interconnectedness of all things.
False Creek at last, where I hook around to the north side, and head west. On past my usual turning point at the Cambie Bridge. Water on my left and, up above me along Marinaside Crescent to my right, one of the three shelter + chairs installations that comprise Lookout.
Created by Christos Dikeakos & Noel Best in 1999, the works feature carved & frosted words to remind us of the Creek’s heritage. I’m not often here, but when I am, I always pause long enough to read some of the words.
Yet farther west, foot of Davie Street, with boats anchored in Quayside Marina on my left and, at water’s edge, the six bronze I-beams of Street Light, by Alex Tregebov & Noel Best. According to the City’s online public art brochure for Yaletown-False Creek, the perforated panels atop these pillars align historic events with actual dates in fancy visual ways. Alas, I’ve never been here at the right moment to see any of that wizardry.
So instead, and as usual, I simply tilt my head up to enjoy some of the superstructure…
tilt my head down to read a few words on the plinth about False Creek Shacks in 1934, and…
level my head to look out across this bit of False Creek, on this very day in 2024.
Focus your eyes a bit above the railing near the cobblestones, and you’ll spot the Canada Goose enjoying the moment right along with me.
By the time i’m passing David Lam Park, my avian companion is a cormorant, not a goose.
There he is, posing atop Buster Simpson’s 1998 work, Brush With Illumination.
I have a very-much-favourite art installation in this park and — with apologies to Simpson (and the cormorant) — Brush isn’t it.
This is it.
Marking High Tide, like its companion pavillion Waiting for Low Tide, is the 1996 creation of sculptor and retired landscape architect Don Vaughan. The latter work is a contemplative circle of large stones in the Creek bed; this one honours the tides with an overhead 360° tribute of words: “As the moon circles the earth the oceans respond with the rhythm of the tides.”
Finally, I leave the water and take myself up to Pacific Blvd where, all along the block stretching east from Homer Street, my eyes are literally on the street.
Well no, make that: literally on the sidewalk.
Which, in this block, is dotted with Gwen Boyle’s 1994 selection of words to reflect the area’s long history.
Once, just once, she offers more than a word or two.
The exception is a longer excerpt from the poem I first noted in my 28 March post “The Beating Sea.”
“… the manstruck forest ..”
I stand there, stunned by the power of his imagery.
So thank you yet again, Earle Birney. You live with us still, in your words and, through the artists you inspire, on our streets.
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 