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.

We agree with her.