Lion and Magic Boy

So. Here I am in wonderful Vancouver with my excellent hair. What to do, what to do? Unable to be parted from my love, who I usually refer to as “Mac”, or sometimes, “the Mac”, I’ve been doing much of my usual posting over at Strollerderby. And obsessively checking my email every 20.4 seconds. So it’s pretty much like being at home.

With some very notable exceptions.

The other night we took a walk in the forest. And when I say “forest” I mean something that’s nothing like the creepy-woods that flourish where I live in PA, the kind of woods that continues to grow when you’re not looking and if you stood still more than a few minutes would curl a green ivy tendril around your ankle, soon to completely engulf you in its insidious greenness. The woods in PA spawn endless evil banks of poison ivy, the kind that lures seven-year-old girls with its lush greenery, causing them to them rub their faces and bodies with their poisoned hands, not knowing that soon they’ll erupt with itchiness that lasts weeks.

The forest here is nothing like that. Imagine welcoming, stately tall cypress trees framing a wide path that at night seems to disappear into magical mist, leaving you with the sense that you’re completely surrounded by the trees, until you get closer and can see that the path turns slightly. Imagine a forest in which you are certain fairies and maybe gnomes live somewhere, just around a corner maybe, the high silvery tinkling voices of the fairies calling you distantly, beckoning, inviting. Imagine a forest where the trees talk, their voices muted slightly in the stillness, but who at the same time assure you of their curiosity, their enduring flexibility, their innate sense of connection with all things living, including you.

Imagine a forest in which you are forever transformed after having walked there and exchanged atoms with the trees.

Yesterday I went for a longish walk in the neighborhood where I am staying. Not far from here is a largish park that later in the evening was pleasantly teeming with people enjoying the sun: runners circling the park on a soft bark path, a group of mixed-age men playing soccer, and another group playing cricket. Cricket? Indeed.

I walked through a neighborhood of very large and undoubtedly expensive homes, not like the charming craftsmanlike bungalows I admired closer to the park, and on into a real city street crawling with banks. When I was here before in 1995, my three-day experience was mainly limited to the city center, a forest of tall buildings and bustle like most cities. I had no idea that quiet residential neighborhoods with cricket-playing parkgoers even existed here. So I got my city experience this time too, but made use of it to check out some art galleries, oases of quiet amid the more energetic feel of the busy street.

Turning again I walked past condo buildings perched three stories high on the side of a steep hill overlooking the real city center. This street was all angles, shadows, and planes, a cacophony of interplay between light and form. At a strategically-placed vantage point I was gifted with the stunning view of downtown with a mountain backdrop, the upsurging energy of the tall buildings juxtaposed with the settled, knowing permanence of the mountains. Truly an amazing sight.

I so could live here.

[tags]vacation, travel, Vancouver, happy[/tags]