Winter, not as most of the country is currently experiencing it, but winter as we experience it here at sea level on the Canadian west coast. More precisely, because the quip fits: winter as we experience it here on the wet coast.
While much of the rest of Canada contends with brutal temperatures and heavy snowfall…
our shops run out of umbrellas.
I see this sign in the VanDusen Botanical Garden gift shop, where I loiter awaiting my partner for our planned winter walk in the Garden.
Sun overhead, and hoar frost sparkles on the grass.
Tree trunks and branches flourish their winter coats of moss.
Sometimes in great goofy patches…
sometimes as a shimmering outline, viewed from the shadow side of a tree trunk facing the sun…
and sometimes draped along the branches of sibling Japanese maples, touching fingers above Heron Lake, itself adorned with a rare skin of ice.
That ice, however, is only in the upper reaches of the lake.
Farther along…
the fountain guarantees open water — to the delight of paddling ducks.
We first walk a path known officially as the Winter Walk, because of its plantings, and as we go we tick the list of its star attractions: witch hazel, heavenly bamboo, Japanese laurel, and wintersweet.
Then we veer off, take other pathways across the Garden, and notice their mid-winter palette as well.
A fiery Red osier dogwood, for example, there in the middle distance, with bright Japanese skimmia right here at our finger tips.
Grasses in the perennial beds are neatly bundled up…
dancing their feathery tips over plant stalks in the flower beds. These plants are pruned for winter and currently anonymous, but their time will come.
Tree trunks!
We are drop-jawed at the jewel tones of this Snow Goose flowering cherry…
and then find ourselves equally impressed by the austere tones of this Sichuan birch.
(Enlivened, I feel compelled to add, by a kick of moss in its upper branches.)
Then we’re off, out past the Garden’s rammed earth sirewall, handsome in any season…
and on down Oak Street for a while, prolonging the walk.
16 September 2024 – Two of the surprises were bonus additions to the plan; the other was a subtraction, that turned out not to matter.
Plan # 1
A friend and I meet at the VanDusen Botanical Garden where, in addition to a walk in the Garden, we plan to take advantage of a bonus activity — free admission for Garden visitors to an unrelated fundraiser event in one of the facility’s meeting rooms.
Surprise. The event is a separate ticket and, as befits a fundraiser, at a hefty price. We decide we are not that fascinated by the event’s focus, and settle for the Garden walk, all on its own.
And it is plenty! Despite heavy skies and intermittent rain…
the air is luminous, and the grounds pop with colour and texture.
The mossy curve of a tree branch, weeping over a brook…
the colour patterns of a Birch tree, bold against its backdrop…
colour intensities along a pathway, so green, so purple, with the glistening silver of rain drops…
and the tonal palette of freshly raked gravel…
in the newly restored Stone Garden.
Plan # 2
The next day, my only plan is to put myself in the hands of my companion, out there in Surrey, who has curated a trio of walks for us to explore. I know about the three walks; unbeknownst to me, he has a surprise in mind for one of them.
BC is chock-full of soaring trees, and sometimes all you have to do is tilt back your head to be wowed all over again.
This head-tilt has me in the middle of Redwood Park, an 80-acre park that contains “the largest collection of Redwood trees north of the 49th parallel” (which is Canada-speak for this stretch of the Canada/US border).
It contains more than 30 other species of European, Asian and North American trees as well, testimony to the park’s backstory. In 1881, on the occasion of their 21st birthday, a settler gave his twin deaf sons a land grant each of 40 adjoining acres. Instead of simply farming the land, the reclusive brothers began re-timbering it, starting with Redwoods and expanding their activities over the years.
I love the history and I’m enjoying the trails, all per plan. Then my companion leads me to the secret.
A sort-of clearing, with lots of fallen logs and stumps, and… And what is all this?
It is the park’s “Farie forest,” per this child’s plaque, aka “faerie village,” per Atlas Obscura language, or just plain old Fairy Forest. It is the designated place in the park where children who have been encouraged/helped to build tiny farie/faerie/fairy homes elsewhere come to tuck them into their own ever-expanding community.
Lots of them.
Lots and lots of them!
All of them obeying the signposted rule: “Do not nail or screw them into a tree and do not remove bark.” So, for example, this tiny house with its fresh-moss décor…
is simply looped into place.
While we’re there, a birthday-party’s-worth of young children arrive and are guided to search out the little gift globes that adults have hidden among the fairy houses. Soon small hands are waving large turquoise globes, and laughter fills the forest.
Two more park visits after that, per the Surrey plan, and I have had a splendid day.
Plan # 3
So the only remaining plan, come late afternoon, is to ride SkyTrain and bus back home to Vancouver and my own neighbourhood.
A simple plan that, as I step down from the bus, offers me one final surprise.
It is Main Street’s turn to host one of this year’s Car Free Days, here in the Lower Mainland! Twenty blocks with no cars, but lots of feet, dog paws, kiosks and tents and tables and things to buy, watch, eat and do.
I join in. I could buy anything from earrings to hand-embroidered T-shirts to goat’s milk hand-milled soaps; I could check I’m registered for the upcoming provincial election or sign up as the newest volunteer at a neighbourhood community centre; I could buy Japanese or Thai or Sri Lankan or Mexican street food (or a cone of old-fashioned day-glo candy floss); I could hold out my hand for a henna-dye pattern or bare some other bit of anatomy for an ink-&-needle permanent tattoo; I could even try my skills at skateboarding in what is surely the world’s tiniest skateboard arena.
But I don’t.
Instead, I watch a judo demonstration, and a juggler, and next join the crowd watching this performer not swallow his sword after all.
"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 