The bear went over the parking lot

Across the street from our ground-level condo, we have had a front-row view of the dismantling of the strange stone structure with a window, which has been decaying for about two years, below an ancient house set on the rocks above.

Four years ago, I launched myself into the night, the Resident Fan Boy in pursuit, when I got a Lifeline call that Demeter had fallen.  As I fled past the stone whatever-it-was - some sort of garage, or storage room?, I could hear a dog barking at me from within.  (Demeter was bruised, but okay.)

Back in the present, I decided to remind myself how the structure had looked, so went to the "Street View" in Google Maps, noticing that the most recent update is November 2022, the first update since spring of 2017, which means that the photographic record of our neighbourhood now postdate our return to Victoria in late 2017, and our move to the condo in September 2019.

After refreshing my memory on how things had looked across the street from us, I wheeled the viewer around and gazed at our patio window, wondering if someone was sitting on the couch that November morning in 2022 - I could tell it was morning, by the angle of the weak autumn sunlight.  The leaves were also autumnal, lots still in the trees, and plenty on the damp sidewalk.  I "virtually" slipped down a side street, had a look at Moka House on Cook Street, then up the hill back to Fairfield Road, to look toward Demeter's building.

Then I saw a familiar figure on the sidewalk.  It was me, facing west, and evidently on the way to set up my mother's breakfast.  I was clearly standing stock-still, off to the right, in the driveway of a 1912 manor, waiting for an older gentleman to scuff through the leaves and pass me.

That was me in pandemic mode, always pulling off the sidewalk to keep the six-foot gap between other pedestrians and me.

I checked my journals, and realised three things:  the sidewalks were dampened for the first time since late spring as we'd had a long drought, lasting well into late October.  I'd just had my first cataract procedure - the reason for my sunglasses, even on a slightly overcast early morning. I had not yet fallen:  I'd hit the pavement around the corner on November 25th, and in this capture, I'd not yet switched to my winter coat.  So this was early November.  Six or seven weeks before I caught COVID, along with Demeter and younger daughter.  I stood on the sidewalk, planning Christmas, no idea of how challenging it was going to be.  But that's true of any time.

This is my second Street View capture.  The last time was in Ottawa, a May about ten years ago.  I saw the Google van with its tower camera that time, while trudging east, across the supermarket parking lot, clutching two cloth bags containing the makings of younger daughter's birthday cake.  I looked up the location later.  I looked remarkably like a bear.