27 December 2022 – Back from Abbotsford (yes! I made it to the Valley for a magical few days with layers & layers of family), I wake to the consequences of nature’s switcheroo from snow to rain.
“Moderate to elevated” risk of flooding in low-lying areas near the ocean, warns the City of Vancouver, due to exceptionally high tides plus strong winds plus rain. Sections of seawall along Burrard Inlet have been closed as a precaution, and False Creek is named as an area of possible flooding.
I pull on my Seriously Waterproof Coat, and go take a look.
In behind the BC Dragon Boat dock, the channel is full to the brim…
and every woofer in sight sports a raincoat.
I cross that same little pedestrian bridge over a water channel west of Olympic Village, and close in on the stretch where gravel and stepping-stone blocks link Hinge Park to the offshore Habitat Island.
No gravel, no stones. Lots of water.
Normally (and thank you TripAdvisor for this handy comparison photo), the pathway looks like this…
but not today.
I gawp at the sight, stepping stones gleaming ghost-pale from the depths. I also wonder whether nature threw that log across the submerged pathway, or workers placed it there earlier, to prevent people from making what could become a dangerous crossing.
Doubling back toward Olympic Village, I peer at more submerged stones…
and rain drops imitating the rain-drop sewer grate…
and then, heading south, I enjoy the comic relief of a Peep-Show Moment On Ontario Street. I am outside an industrial laundry facility, looking in.
It’s a huge, rambling, and pretty old facility — dickensian-derelict on the outside, but still heaving great bright-white hammocks of laundry loads around on the inside. I can hear motors grinding away, and the window panes shimmy to the beat.
And then!
And then I stop off at Pâtisserie Melo for hot chocolate…
27 February 2022 – It turns out to be a false deadline — but who knew, at the time?
The morning weather mavens are all serious faces and urgent voices: Merely cloudy now, they tell us, but by 1 p.m., it’s atmospheric river time! Snow, rain, high winds, ugly-ugly — and set to last for 3-4 days.
Suitably motivated, I zip out the door. If I want to say hello to False Creek, right now is the time.
No lingering to admire Animalitoland’s winsome lady (VMF 2020) as I zigzag north-west.
On to the Creek! Where I find everybody full speed with their morning agendas.
Paddlers getting organized, down on their dock just east of Olympic Village Square …
jogger jogging over the inlet, far side of the Square …
ferry boat bustling eastward to the Village Dock …
and an improbable bird house out on Habitat Island, just off Hinge Park, glowing gold against the surrounding grey.
No real live bird would give that creation a moment’s thought, but it’s not there for the birds, is it? Some human being built and hung it there to amuse and charm the rest of us. And since it harms no-one, I am charmed.
As I am by my next discovery, looped into the chain link fence just west of Habitat Island.
“Draw someone you love,” says that glossy red sign — and look at the display.
Most of the drawings are of humans …
but not all.
On I go and on I go, and out there past Spyglass Place, closing in on Leg-in-Boot Square, I see another drawing of love. This one.
I know. It’s just another, yet another, yet another generic old boring old smiley face. Please.
Except… it’s wearing a mask. So this is a drawing of love in action: love for each other, for our community as a whole.
I’m still cheered by that thought as I turn back east — and further cheered by the fact that the dread 1 p.m. deadline draws close, but there is no sign yet of snow/rain/wind/general mayhem.
Anyway, what’s wrong with rain?
I will not argue with Thrive Art Studio and their alley wisdom (VMF 2018).
1 February 2022 – I said this about the Burrard Bridge some years back and it’s still true: I stare at a bridge and I think, this is geometry made visible.
I’m on the north side of False Creek, under access ramps for the Cambie Street bridge. I look up and there it is, right before my eyes, visible and tangible. Geometry.
If that seems more than a tad artsy-precious, I can point to sober old Encyclopedia Britannica for validation. Geometry, it tells us, is “the branch of mathematics concerned with the shape of individual objects, spatial relationships among various objects, and the properties of the surrounding space.”
Shapes and relationships!
Here, for example…
and here (with some bike geometry thrown in to keep the bridge company)…
and also here, marching south to cross False Creek.
I turn back north, then angle my footsteps to go spiral my way up the pedestrian/cyclist access ramp on this eastern side of the bridge.
Oh.
Right! Time to find the pedestrian access for the other, west side of the bridge — which I haven’t used in a couple of years, but know is sprawled at some distance from this side.
Fortunately, I am capable of following arrows, when sufficiently large and vivid.
Even when they require me to turn left and then turn left again.
And here I finally am, heading south mid-bridge, with all these parallel lines yearning to converge at infinity, should we grant them sufficient time and space.
But we don’t.
I am soon dog-legging my way back down to ground just as a runner starts his upward climb.
Street-side, signage tells me what the closures are all about. Text explains the need for structural repairs and seismic upgrades …
while bold red lines trace the ramps, the bridge, and their fit with each other and with the cityscape either side of False Creek.
“Spatial relationship among various objects, and the properties of surrounding space.” Thank you, Britannica.
21 January 2022 – I did not expect to contract Barge Brain. I was setting out from the Olympic Village dock in False Creek with an English Bay walk in mind — one that, yes, would include walking past the barge, but nothing more emphatic than that. Just a polite nod to an improbable celebrity as I carried on toward points farther north-west and whatever delights they might offer.
So I jump on the ferry with a clear plan in mind.
A family jumps on as well. The parents, engaged and empathetic, encourage their toddler to face forward, clutch an imaginary wheel with his little hands, and steer the boat. He of course will have none of it, and looks every which way but forward.
Ah well. They get off at Granville Island; I transfer to another ferry for the onward trip that takes us under the Burrard Street bridge, out of False Creek into English Bay, and across to the Aquatic Centre dock on the north side of the Bay. From there, I’ll walk the seawall — past Sunset Beach, on up to Morton Park just shy of Stanley Park, beyond the top frame of this map.
Sunset Beach is home to the barge. The cap-B Barge. The Celebrity Barge. The barge nobody knew or cared about until violent winds on November 15th sent it crashing onto the rocks of Sunset Beach. Where it hung its ponderous length at a tipsy angle, for all the world like a drunk clutching his lamp post, and has continued to hang ever since.
I step onto the Aquatic Centre dock, look north-west — and there it is. That rusty-red rectangle on a point of rocky land.
I start walking toward it, already feeling more fascination than I had anticipated. Two discoveries, even at this distance.
One, the barge is damn big. Lordy, it is big.
And two, the barge is just across that narrow tongue of water from my favourite Vancouver Biennale sculpture of them all: Bernar Venet’s 217.5 Arc x 13 installation of 13 arcs of steel, each arc shaped to that number of degrees. So before approaching the barge, I veer onto the sand, to pay my respects to the sculpture. (And to take this so-obvious shot of them both. Sorry! It is very obvious, isn’t it?)
Now on past that little tongue of water, closer to the barge — and to heaped piles of other debris, also thrown ashore by the storms.
Now I’m close, and I just stand there and gawk. Seeing one of these things far off in the water gives you no sense of scale. Up close, it’s different. You measure it against a parked car, or passers-by — these women with their strollers, for example.
My brain is whirling. How big is it? Media love factoids, why has nobody told me how long this thing is, how tall? And come to that, what is it? They say “barge” — but surely there are categories of barge? Why haven’t they told us these things? Pick-pick, grumble-grumble.
Later I look online. I can’t find any local reference to length, but a recent New York Times article about our celebrity barge says it is “nearly 200 feet long.” (Nearly 60 metres.) And one local story does in passing identify it as a “chip” (wood-chip) barge — corroborated by a photographer, who in November sent a drone aloft to investigate, which indeed saw scant wood chip residue in an otherwise empty shell.
I prowl its length, staring over and up. Up and up.
From the near end …
looking toward the far end …
taking in all those shades & shapes, all that texture …
sliding off the far end …
with a final backward glance at the entire hulk.
I think what fun Vancouverites have had, coming up with punning names for this impromptu event: “Barge on the Beach,” an easy slide from the Bard on the Beach open-air theatrical offerings across the water in Vanier Park; also “Barge Chilling Beach,” an amused play on our Dude Chilling Park.
But it’s not all fun, and I think about that, too. Several tiers of government are trying to solve the problem of guarding & removing the barge (which poses real environmental risks) and the owner, Sentry Marine Towing, is not proving particularly visible or forth-coming. Indeed, when I try to visit Sentry’s website I end up staring at a Not Found/404 message instead. As a recent CTV report suggests, removal is complicated and civic authorities, fronting the process & the costs, may not see either action or repayment any time soon.
And then I stop thinking about all that, and tell my Barge Brain to give it a rest.
I move on. I turn my attention to nature.
A whole flotilla of Barrow’s Goldeneye ducks …
two small stones resting atop two large rocks, in modest tribute (the storms tumbled all those grandiose stacked stones and I find I am pleased) …
and even the first spears of spring daffodils.
Just off Morton Park, where I’ve often visited the A-Maze-ing Laughter sculptures, I discover a sundial, a 1967 Centennial project that has until now escaped my notice.
So I linger with it a moment …
and then turn back east to start the walk & ferry travel that will take me home.
I walk several docks past the Aquatic Centre before boarding a ferry, all the way back to the Aquabus dock in David Lam Park, and I am well pleased with my day when I finally step into a floating rainbow.
"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 