16 March 2025 – If my 1 March post was a love-letter to urban clutter, this one might strike you as a love-letter to maritime clutter. At least, while still on the Vancouver side of Burrard Inlet.

I’m in the long approach to the Waterfront SeaBus Terminal, in the connector between Waterfront Station, with all its urban transit links, and the SeaBus Terminal proper, down at water level. It’s a sunny/cloudy/rain-splattered day, with the intervals of sunshine throwing long shadows across the walkway.

But where’s the promised clutter? you ask.

It’s coming.

I slow down. The next ferry will depart in 1 min. 27 sec. time (the count-down screen is counting), and I know I won’t get to the waiting room in time. Nor does it matter — the ferry after that is the one I want to take, the ones my north-shore friends will meet.

With no need to hurry, I look around.

There’s the Vancouver Harbour Heliport, caught in the V-slashes of these window frames, with a helicopter on the pad, and maritime clutter all around — a line-up of harbour cranes, stacks of shipping containers below their voracious grasp, and two crows on the light standard so you know you’re in Vancouver. Plus reflections dancing merrily on the window pane.

Either you think the reflections spoil the picture, or — like me — you enjoy them as part of the moment, more visual information jumping into the story.

Next window pane offers rain splatters as its contribution to maritime clutter, and the view of a laden freighter, just starting to make its way back up the Inlet toward the Pacific Ocean and its next port of call.

Low-hanging clouds in that scene as well, running horizontal streaks across the mountains beyond, and snowy peaks above all that. (Nature’s own clutter.)

More clouds, more containers, more cranes — all caught in a fleeting glimpse as the escalator rolls me past another window on my ride down to sea level.

The waiting room window shows me the back end of the ferry I missed, making her stately way past the nearest cranes…

and the scratched & splattered window of the ferry I catch rewards me with sun dogs that bounce silver across the water. (Brooded over by those cranes.) (And by pale reflections of overhead lights, here inside the ferry.)

No scratches in sight, once I’m off the ferry and halfway up Mount Seymour, going walkabouts with my friends. Rain drops, yes — but as sun showers on our heads, not on a window. Reflections, also — but as rain crystals that turn the winter moss to neon.

Just look at it!

We pass endless happy dogs, whose owners laugh when we apologize to the woofs that all we have to offer is adoration, not treats.

I point out a dramatic tree trunk, beside the path. Wow, says my friend; even more shredded than a few days ago. Those Pileated Woodpeckers have been busy!

Not to be outdone by hungry woodpeckers, we return to their place and show what hungry humans can do to a post-lunch treat of dark chocolate and dark coffee.