Raw Material from the Journal
While in Rehoboth, I visited Browseabout Books and there was able to purchase some Moleskine journals. These excellent little blank books were recommended to me by Jeff Geib, whose advise on such matters is almost unfailingly superb. I was immediately taken with the quality of the paper, the fine binding, and the elastic closure. I am now a Moleskine junky. I simply must have a small journal in my breast pocket at all times, much to the amusement of my travelling companions.
I had planned all along to keep a sketch journal and a journal of notes or reflections, and had purchased much larger and bulkier (and heavier) journals from an art-supply store, but in the final packing before my departure I jettisoned those in favor of the Moleskines alone. This was one of several technical changes or innovations I made surrounding this trip. I will recount the others in their turn.
To give a sense of the way I operate in preparing a journal, I submit for your edification raw, but obviously transcribed, notes from my journal.
22 June 2006
On way down [to Philadelphia airport from Lancaster] Suzy and I discussed our relationships with our cousins.
3:30 a.m. PHL terminal D Air Canada, United, Continental, Air Tran
Some Aussies from NSW with bicycle, golf clubs, etc. led off the march into United, which seems to be combined with Air Canada. Passed through security without incident (just the usual cluelessness – mostly afterwards – readjusting gear).
In place at gate D & listening to baroque concerto through the intercom at 5 a.m.
hardly seems like 90 minutes have elapsed heart racing a bit.
Met a nice young woman from Halifax NS who works for a Canadian salt company as a safety specialist – was at a safety conference in Phda and now returning to NS by way of Toronto.
Also some Indian-Americans (college age or so) who were late for their flight yesterday.
Grey two-tones – a feldgrau and a lighter silver grey with a Prussian blue in the much stained carpet in the United - Air Canada sector.
The baroque has given way to a kind of new-age impressionism – perhaps the largo movement but very loose.
Black leather and brushed steel double seats.
6:04 a.m. standing in a queue waiting for information card [required by USA Homeland Security] to be processed.
Jazz plane very small and cramped but I have the window seat for what that’s worth
7:00? Haze but sunny – rush of jets, not quite enough – then – airborne riding north and slightly east over the bend of the Delaware, then arching east –
now above a mixture of industry, farm, and suburbs – very many swimming pools glittering like blue opals from this height –
now a major six-lane highway and a smaller river (the Schuylkill?) Neat burbs, burbs, burbs as far as the eye can see –
now into a bank of clouds; wispy below, cumulus above
now those are past; now above a quarry
now into a turbulence and all is white – or grey – vapor streaks by the cadmium yellow upright at the end of the wind; we seem to be descending...
Patterns of a blanket of clouds
sometimes the clouds seem like ranges of mountains in plains
misty valleys
hard to think of the clouds as "insubstantial"!
Now leaving the comfortable plains of clouds and passing out over a dim steel-grey sea – and it is a sea – one of the great lakes – the waves and ripples on its surface catching the new sun light.
Now we are over a small bank of cloud again through which another small plane has just darted off to our right.
Now over water again.
The edge of the plain of clouds as we descend into Toronto.
8:44 a.m. Toronto.
Customs:
"What is your business in Canada?
You’re not going to visit any farms?
Why do you need all this photographic equipment?"
Had to be shuttled twice because of the size of the airport and apparently because of renovations. YYZ certainly seems much newer, brighter, perhaps cleaner than PHL. Also, the layout of suburbs seen from the air seems neater and less haphazard in Canada than in the States.
Had to take off shirts, belt, and boots as well as open my carry-on and photo-case as part of the customs inspections.
Now, waiting for boarding of my flight to Vancouver, 1187.
So far I have been too hot in teeshirt, linen shirt, and canvas outershirt, but I hesitate to place any of them in my backpack.
I’m also bilious and starting to feel a bit sleepy.
Sat next to Gina M, the salt safety woman from Nova Scotia, in the flight from Phda.
We will fly at 34,000 feet; it is 13 C in Vancouver now, it should reach 20 C today; it is partly cloudy there.
We will fly over Sault St Marie and Thunder Bay, then cross over into the Fraser Canyon.
While I wait I draw a sketch of the equipment on the ground out the window of flight 1187.
Cloud shapes above the land
the shadows clearly visible on the ground
patterns of wooded land along stream incorporated into rigid rectangular field plot scheme
quite a good deal of forested land to be seen here – the roads are all on the square
here and there are signs of old cuts – perhaps rail lines now defunct
now we see a town laid out in part "on the bias"
though why I can’t guess
Here a large bend of the road
banks of puffy clouds as we enter turbulence climbing to 30,000 feet
passing out over large body of water
the pattern of fluffy clouds over land and smooth over water
the captain came on minutes out to say that the turbulence noted above was unexpected
but experienced by all planes in the area – we will hold at 30,000 feet until we get to the Sault St Marie area, and then go higher to regular cruising altitude.
Behind the wing, lucid, luminous blue of the Great Lake – before the wing a shoreline which hardly seems to move, crowned with cloud
Perhaps I can find this shoreline? [On a map, based upon a sketch accompanying these words.]
Lakes
Now we pass over a substantial airport about two miles from the lake – we are now over land again.
This appears to be an island.
There is a lot of clear cutting timbering and mining here.
A large lake of reddish-brown sludge was hard to miss –
another smaller airport
the many small lakes "smeared" along the land and the reason for the heavy tannin-like stain into the lake at the river – acres and acres of clear cut land.
Clouds like webs
now the land is mostly hidden and it seems we are above water again
now we pass over thick ranges of clouds
Probably the last pages are of the island to the east of Sault St Marie
astonishing long fingers of land – like the edge of a rotting board
seem to jut out from the mainland or from some larger island
we seem to be over land again
a larger city is below us and to what I guess is the south –
again open mining mostly on the surface – in amongst lakes, forest, farms –
the roads are more irregular here. We are still ascending –
presumably we are just passing Sault St Marie
Looks like some hilly country here
roads here follow contours more
even the major highways
lots of lakes with this formula:
lake at center, beach and cleared ground, then forest.
Rivers passing through marshy ground, or so it would seem from here.
Many many lakes, sometimes joining as though to form larger bodies
the entire landscape now about half water and half forest – very few fields, not many roads – many small rivers with oxbows
occasionally on a lake what appears to be a boat or two
clouds
most logging leaves a brown mark, not a spotted green area...
In some places one can see the flow of the soil running off
the patterns of the lake seem to alternate between a kind of rounded amorphous and linear and "crumbly"
the clouds form "waves" which join in some places
now we see fewer lakes and more logging roads
like rocks in the Susquehanna at Lock 12 – but clouds
Now we pass over farmland with much larger plots than we have seen yet –
the cloud cover here is thick and deep
here and there below can see through the clouds – but in the distance if one looks carefully one sees great long roads converging beyond the horizon
these masses of cloud must be miles across – we approach them slowly enough that I can draw their individual features in outline before we pass
still the squared roads below
Now passing over a large brown lake, where the roads must scatter a bit
the water of the lake has turned a bright algae green broken by cloud shadows –
or perhaps it is blue water partially concealed by green stuff – at any rate a large body of water – now we see the shore...
Now algae bloom or other growth seems likely
a great range of cloud
now again the lake forests, dotted trees, fields, often with traces of "inferior" land
the cloud shadows are surprisingly dark on the land
we now travel over a plain of cloud like a field of snow into which great snowballs have been thrown here and there forming craters with a smooth lump in the middle. These are great thunder head like clouds in the main mass.
We move at such a rate that the clouds ahead seem not to move at all – it is as though we are suspended motionless
the roads often seem to break off at the edges of parcels -- to prevent one sleeping at the wheel?
Here, the cloud plain seems to clear a little, and the ground looks like a decaying plate of iron – many eskers and drumlins [what I meant here was small glacial lakes -- persons with decent geological training may laugh now]; the brown ground dotted with them but farming amazingly seems to go on around them
the human grid over the dotting of lakes is odd
there is a great river in the distance which seems to have been dammed or filled
at several points
At places the many tiny lakes converge into a greater mass – not exactly a lake, but a less-ground-than-water place
the river now opens out into a wide place – I should guess roughly the size of Lake Aldred.
Here the first evidence I’ve seen of contour farming – also what appear to be canals or ditches as in northern Indiana. Just as in some places the lakes converge, in others the ground seems to pull itself together and forms a "drier" section. It’s here that we see the canals.
Here’s what’s left of a river channel, smeared and obliterated by what forces I could not say.
The houses here must be roofed in steel – they shine like silver dots on the land, no more than points, but recognizable as houses.
Here again – is it a lake or a river, or just a lot of water sluggishly flowing?
There’s a spot there the little lakes are mostly dried up dust bowls, and the larger lakes have a yellow creamy foam colour
Here the unvaryingly straight road crosses a khaki-hued lake
thunderheads form beneath us
now silken-smooth clouds from horizon to horizon hiding all the earth from view
when anything can be seen, it’s more of the same...
AND NOW –
river through deeply carven banks
many of the large lakes seem to be silted brown, or are two tones of khaki, very distinctly marked
about an hour from Vancouver, we pass over a large city, mostly hidden by cloud (this proves later to be Calgary)
now – what appear to be snowfields – sluggish rivers – roads once again scattered over the land.
The Rockies!
Did he say 60 degrees or 16 degrees in Vancouver?
We begin to descend over Kelowna (kah-low-nah)
mountain peak like a knife, next to a long trough
All the mountainous region is marked by cumulous clouds, presumably the air heated by the sun on the stone rises up to form these
large lake and
many clear cut patches
we seem to be descending towards the Coastal Range
The clouds now look like nothing more than a white, rose, and blue forest – the ground below is forested, though heavily logged as well.
Now we see hills rather than mountains – hills like the Blue Ridge – still snow on the taller hillsides
Now the hills give way to mountains again and the peaks of the mountains rise up above the clouds!
Now we pass over a large city on the edge of a Lake – Kelowna
the wakes of motorboats can be seen on smaller lakes to the west – the great mountains still approach
rosy in the distance it seems to stand still
yet each moment it is nearer and more distance. We descend
behind us the hills and the crinkled clouds
coming in to what I presume to be the Fraser Valley all clouds behind
this mountain to the south and the great mountain beyond it [I learn later this is Mt Baker in Washington State]
glimpses of a river – a great lake – like river just beneath us, snow-flecked moutains, ever-green forests, a great dam
another river in the distance – houses – farmlands – a great city on the banks of the river, greenhouses, golfcourse, malls – the Straits of Georgia – the Pacific!
Logging rafts on the river railroad sidings and now the city spreading to the sea.
424, 10 to airport station C90 to 98 B-line transfer to #98 to Granville and 5th Avenue, cross Granville Street using the underpass take bus #4 to NW Marine Drive walk downhill, first right to Jericho Park.
Arrival in Vancouver airport almost anticlimactic to the flight – no customs – no fuss, just right out to the baggage claim, which, notably, was very easy to find. My cell-phone, as it happens, has "miraculously" changed to local time. Could not quite figure out how to get the bus to work, or rather, how to work the bus properly. I dug though my pack a second time to find the directions to Jericho Beach. I went to an ATM and took out $100 CAD then to the Post to buy a 16x stamps @ 51c CAD ea then to a 7-11 to buy a bottled water and a map of the Vancouver transit authority – then back out to the bus area. Fortunately, saw a fellow with a backpack and several other packages – thought we could at least be clueless together – he turned out to be quite familiar with the bus system; from NZ, he hadn’t been living in NZ for ten years, but had just been home to NZ and returned at that moment to his home of for years in Vancouver. He had also hiked for two weeks in China. "With a tour or just on your own?" I asked him. "Just on my own." "Do you speak any of the Chinese languages?" "No- but I went anyway. I picked up a few phrases. It's amazing how much you can communicate without words." I think the USA may breed xenophobes, but NZ seems not to.
Having received instructions and assistance from the Kiwi, I left him with my card at 4th Street, made my transfer, and arrived at Jericho Beach around noon local time. I called Suzy and Willow, walked down to the beach and back, went to my room, tried ineffectually to correct some problems with my cellphone, and fell asleep until 7 p.m. local – thinking that this was 4 p.m. local [because I hadn't grasped that my cellphone had adjusted]...
Washed, came to the hostel café – many Germans here
Dinner at Hostel Café: $6.25 CAD for tea, a burger, and salad. That, four granola bars, and a hummus pita ($5.00 USD) on plane, two cups weak tea also in plane, water, and bagel - isotonix OPC-3, and mochatonix before departure from Lancaster were my total intake today.
[Went for a walk in the evening to Pacific Spirit Regional Park:]
Many familiar species in the Pacific Spirit Regional Park (I came as far as the "Pioneer" trail along the "Spanish" Trail beginning at Spanish Banks) – many thrushes – beautiful! Quite a few maples of a species I don’t know. Heuchera, Beggar’s Ticks, Plantain, various raspberries, Oregon Grape a common forb, great ferns; a sort of red elderberry is quite common.
The sun has just set; it’s 9:24 p.m. local time; the mosquitos are terrible and it’s getting cold fast for a guy in tee shirt and linen long-sleeve, even with my ear cap!
What I took originally as a geranium or fern is shown by its flower to be a sort of Bleeding Heart with a pink inflorescence. Trailing Arbutus (? but prob.). Back to hostel by 10 – ½ hour walk from Spanish Banks west [actually east] to Discovery Avenue.
Up til 1 with the hostellers – and cleaned up after them.
I had planned all along to keep a sketch journal and a journal of notes or reflections, and had purchased much larger and bulkier (and heavier) journals from an art-supply store, but in the final packing before my departure I jettisoned those in favor of the Moleskines alone. This was one of several technical changes or innovations I made surrounding this trip. I will recount the others in their turn.
To give a sense of the way I operate in preparing a journal, I submit for your edification raw, but obviously transcribed, notes from my journal.
22 June 2006
On way down [to Philadelphia airport from Lancaster] Suzy and I discussed our relationships with our cousins.
3:30 a.m. PHL terminal D Air Canada, United, Continental, Air Tran
Some Aussies from NSW with bicycle, golf clubs, etc. led off the march into United, which seems to be combined with Air Canada. Passed through security without incident (just the usual cluelessness – mostly afterwards – readjusting gear).
In place at gate D & listening to baroque concerto through the intercom at 5 a.m.
hardly seems like 90 minutes have elapsed heart racing a bit.
Met a nice young woman from Halifax NS who works for a Canadian salt company as a safety specialist – was at a safety conference in Phda and now returning to NS by way of Toronto.
Also some Indian-Americans (college age or so) who were late for their flight yesterday.
Grey two-tones – a feldgrau and a lighter silver grey with a Prussian blue in the much stained carpet in the United - Air Canada sector.
The baroque has given way to a kind of new-age impressionism – perhaps the largo movement but very loose.
Black leather and brushed steel double seats.
6:04 a.m. standing in a queue waiting for information card [required by USA Homeland Security] to be processed.
Jazz plane very small and cramped but I have the window seat for what that’s worth
7:00? Haze but sunny – rush of jets, not quite enough – then – airborne riding north and slightly east over the bend of the Delaware, then arching east –
now above a mixture of industry, farm, and suburbs – very many swimming pools glittering like blue opals from this height –
now a major six-lane highway and a smaller river (the Schuylkill?) Neat burbs, burbs, burbs as far as the eye can see –
now into a bank of clouds; wispy below, cumulus above
now those are past; now above a quarry
now into a turbulence and all is white – or grey – vapor streaks by the cadmium yellow upright at the end of the wind; we seem to be descending...
Patterns of a blanket of clouds
sometimes the clouds seem like ranges of mountains in plains
misty valleys
hard to think of the clouds as "insubstantial"!
Now leaving the comfortable plains of clouds and passing out over a dim steel-grey sea – and it is a sea – one of the great lakes – the waves and ripples on its surface catching the new sun light.
Now we are over a small bank of cloud again through which another small plane has just darted off to our right.
Now over water again.
The edge of the plain of clouds as we descend into Toronto.
8:44 a.m. Toronto.
Customs:
"What is your business in Canada?
You’re not going to visit any farms?
Why do you need all this photographic equipment?"
Had to be shuttled twice because of the size of the airport and apparently because of renovations. YYZ certainly seems much newer, brighter, perhaps cleaner than PHL. Also, the layout of suburbs seen from the air seems neater and less haphazard in Canada than in the States.
Had to take off shirts, belt, and boots as well as open my carry-on and photo-case as part of the customs inspections.
Now, waiting for boarding of my flight to Vancouver, 1187.
So far I have been too hot in teeshirt, linen shirt, and canvas outershirt, but I hesitate to place any of them in my backpack.
I’m also bilious and starting to feel a bit sleepy.
Sat next to Gina M, the salt safety woman from Nova Scotia, in the flight from Phda.
We will fly at 34,000 feet; it is 13 C in Vancouver now, it should reach 20 C today; it is partly cloudy there.
We will fly over Sault St Marie and Thunder Bay, then cross over into the Fraser Canyon.
While I wait I draw a sketch of the equipment on the ground out the window of flight 1187.
Cloud shapes above the land
the shadows clearly visible on the ground
patterns of wooded land along stream incorporated into rigid rectangular field plot scheme
quite a good deal of forested land to be seen here – the roads are all on the square
here and there are signs of old cuts – perhaps rail lines now defunct
now we see a town laid out in part "on the bias"
though why I can’t guess
Here a large bend of the road
banks of puffy clouds as we enter turbulence climbing to 30,000 feet
passing out over large body of water
the pattern of fluffy clouds over land and smooth over water
the captain came on minutes out to say that the turbulence noted above was unexpected
but experienced by all planes in the area – we will hold at 30,000 feet until we get to the Sault St Marie area, and then go higher to regular cruising altitude.
Behind the wing, lucid, luminous blue of the Great Lake – before the wing a shoreline which hardly seems to move, crowned with cloud
Perhaps I can find this shoreline? [On a map, based upon a sketch accompanying these words.]
Lakes
Now we pass over a substantial airport about two miles from the lake – we are now over land again.
This appears to be an island.
There is a lot of clear cutting timbering and mining here.
A large lake of reddish-brown sludge was hard to miss –
another smaller airport
the many small lakes "smeared" along the land and the reason for the heavy tannin-like stain into the lake at the river – acres and acres of clear cut land.
Clouds like webs
now the land is mostly hidden and it seems we are above water again
now we pass over thick ranges of clouds
Probably the last pages are of the island to the east of Sault St Marie
astonishing long fingers of land – like the edge of a rotting board
seem to jut out from the mainland or from some larger island
we seem to be over land again
a larger city is below us and to what I guess is the south –
again open mining mostly on the surface – in amongst lakes, forest, farms –
the roads are more irregular here. We are still ascending –
presumably we are just passing Sault St Marie
Looks like some hilly country here
roads here follow contours more
even the major highways
lots of lakes with this formula:
lake at center, beach and cleared ground, then forest.
Rivers passing through marshy ground, or so it would seem from here.
Many many lakes, sometimes joining as though to form larger bodies
the entire landscape now about half water and half forest – very few fields, not many roads – many small rivers with oxbows
occasionally on a lake what appears to be a boat or two
clouds
most logging leaves a brown mark, not a spotted green area...
In some places one can see the flow of the soil running off
the patterns of the lake seem to alternate between a kind of rounded amorphous and linear and "crumbly"
the clouds form "waves" which join in some places
now we see fewer lakes and more logging roads
like rocks in the Susquehanna at Lock 12 – but clouds
Now we pass over farmland with much larger plots than we have seen yet –
the cloud cover here is thick and deep
here and there below can see through the clouds – but in the distance if one looks carefully one sees great long roads converging beyond the horizon
these masses of cloud must be miles across – we approach them slowly enough that I can draw their individual features in outline before we pass
still the squared roads below
Now passing over a large brown lake, where the roads must scatter a bit
the water of the lake has turned a bright algae green broken by cloud shadows –
or perhaps it is blue water partially concealed by green stuff – at any rate a large body of water – now we see the shore...
Now algae bloom or other growth seems likely
a great range of cloud
now again the lake forests, dotted trees, fields, often with traces of "inferior" land
the cloud shadows are surprisingly dark on the land
we now travel over a plain of cloud like a field of snow into which great snowballs have been thrown here and there forming craters with a smooth lump in the middle. These are great thunder head like clouds in the main mass.
We move at such a rate that the clouds ahead seem not to move at all – it is as though we are suspended motionless
the roads often seem to break off at the edges of parcels -- to prevent one sleeping at the wheel?
Here, the cloud plain seems to clear a little, and the ground looks like a decaying plate of iron – many eskers and drumlins [what I meant here was small glacial lakes -- persons with decent geological training may laugh now]; the brown ground dotted with them but farming amazingly seems to go on around them
the human grid over the dotting of lakes is odd
there is a great river in the distance which seems to have been dammed or filled
at several points
At places the many tiny lakes converge into a greater mass – not exactly a lake, but a less-ground-than-water place
the river now opens out into a wide place – I should guess roughly the size of Lake Aldred.
Here the first evidence I’ve seen of contour farming – also what appear to be canals or ditches as in northern Indiana. Just as in some places the lakes converge, in others the ground seems to pull itself together and forms a "drier" section. It’s here that we see the canals.
Here’s what’s left of a river channel, smeared and obliterated by what forces I could not say.
The houses here must be roofed in steel – they shine like silver dots on the land, no more than points, but recognizable as houses.
Here again – is it a lake or a river, or just a lot of water sluggishly flowing?
There’s a spot there the little lakes are mostly dried up dust bowls, and the larger lakes have a yellow creamy foam colour
Here the unvaryingly straight road crosses a khaki-hued lake
thunderheads form beneath us
now silken-smooth clouds from horizon to horizon hiding all the earth from view
when anything can be seen, it’s more of the same...
AND NOW –
river through deeply carven banks
many of the large lakes seem to be silted brown, or are two tones of khaki, very distinctly marked
about an hour from Vancouver, we pass over a large city, mostly hidden by cloud (this proves later to be Calgary)
now – what appear to be snowfields – sluggish rivers – roads once again scattered over the land.
The Rockies!
Did he say 60 degrees or 16 degrees in Vancouver?
We begin to descend over Kelowna (kah-low-nah)
mountain peak like a knife, next to a long trough
All the mountainous region is marked by cumulous clouds, presumably the air heated by the sun on the stone rises up to form these
large lake and
many clear cut patches
we seem to be descending towards the Coastal Range
The clouds now look like nothing more than a white, rose, and blue forest – the ground below is forested, though heavily logged as well.
Now we see hills rather than mountains – hills like the Blue Ridge – still snow on the taller hillsides
Now the hills give way to mountains again and the peaks of the mountains rise up above the clouds!
Now we pass over a large city on the edge of a Lake – Kelowna
the wakes of motorboats can be seen on smaller lakes to the west – the great mountains still approach
rosy in the distance it seems to stand still
yet each moment it is nearer and more distance. We descend
behind us the hills and the crinkled clouds
coming in to what I presume to be the Fraser Valley all clouds behind
this mountain to the south and the great mountain beyond it [I learn later this is Mt Baker in Washington State]
glimpses of a river – a great lake – like river just beneath us, snow-flecked moutains, ever-green forests, a great dam
another river in the distance – houses – farmlands – a great city on the banks of the river, greenhouses, golfcourse, malls – the Straits of Georgia – the Pacific!
Logging rafts on the river railroad sidings and now the city spreading to the sea.
424, 10 to airport station C90 to 98 B-line transfer to #98 to Granville and 5th Avenue, cross Granville Street using the underpass take bus #4 to NW Marine Drive walk downhill, first right to Jericho Park.
Arrival in Vancouver airport almost anticlimactic to the flight – no customs – no fuss, just right out to the baggage claim, which, notably, was very easy to find. My cell-phone, as it happens, has "miraculously" changed to local time. Could not quite figure out how to get the bus to work, or rather, how to work the bus properly. I dug though my pack a second time to find the directions to Jericho Beach. I went to an ATM and took out $100 CAD then to the Post to buy a 16x stamps @ 51c CAD ea then to a 7-11 to buy a bottled water and a map of the Vancouver transit authority – then back out to the bus area. Fortunately, saw a fellow with a backpack and several other packages – thought we could at least be clueless together – he turned out to be quite familiar with the bus system; from NZ, he hadn’t been living in NZ for ten years, but had just been home to NZ and returned at that moment to his home of for years in Vancouver. He had also hiked for two weeks in China. "With a tour or just on your own?" I asked him. "Just on my own." "Do you speak any of the Chinese languages?" "No- but I went anyway. I picked up a few phrases. It's amazing how much you can communicate without words." I think the USA may breed xenophobes, but NZ seems not to.
Having received instructions and assistance from the Kiwi, I left him with my card at 4th Street, made my transfer, and arrived at Jericho Beach around noon local time. I called Suzy and Willow, walked down to the beach and back, went to my room, tried ineffectually to correct some problems with my cellphone, and fell asleep until 7 p.m. local – thinking that this was 4 p.m. local [because I hadn't grasped that my cellphone had adjusted]...
Washed, came to the hostel café – many Germans here
Dinner at Hostel Café: $6.25 CAD for tea, a burger, and salad. That, four granola bars, and a hummus pita ($5.00 USD) on plane, two cups weak tea also in plane, water, and bagel - isotonix OPC-3, and mochatonix before departure from Lancaster were my total intake today.
[Went for a walk in the evening to Pacific Spirit Regional Park:]
Many familiar species in the Pacific Spirit Regional Park (I came as far as the "Pioneer" trail along the "Spanish" Trail beginning at Spanish Banks) – many thrushes – beautiful! Quite a few maples of a species I don’t know. Heuchera, Beggar’s Ticks, Plantain, various raspberries, Oregon Grape a common forb, great ferns; a sort of red elderberry is quite common.
The sun has just set; it’s 9:24 p.m. local time; the mosquitos are terrible and it’s getting cold fast for a guy in tee shirt and linen long-sleeve, even with my ear cap!
What I took originally as a geranium or fern is shown by its flower to be a sort of Bleeding Heart with a pink inflorescence. Trailing Arbutus (? but prob.). Back to hostel by 10 – ½ hour walk from Spanish Banks west [actually east] to Discovery Avenue.
Up til 1 with the hostellers – and cleaned up after them.
posted by M E Achtermann at 4:31 pm
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