I saw the sea

This shot from the beginning of this month, was the first time I'd been able to see Juan de Fuca Strait clearly in nearly five years. It was evening and the mist was being funnelled down in between the mountains. My heart was full of joy.

Same date, same place, a world apart

Rejoicing in our new neighbourhood 22 Oct 2019

Similar view, three years later

 

The year of eight months

This year, we didn't seem to have a May and a June.

I kept trying to put my winter coat away, then having to retrieve it.

Summer hit in July, and our usual yearly drought started about the middle of that month, and continued on, and September and October were subsumed into a three-month August.

Yesterday evening, it felt like autumn for the first time this year.  I needed a jacket, and looking west, saw the grey clouds swirling with the lemon-yellow light in a sky that finally looked seasonal.

This morning, I walked out with a furled umbrella under an expectant pewter-coloured canopy, but it was only after my early coffee shop visit, when I turned my toes in the direction of my mother's home, that I caught the first faint sounds: the crackling hiss of drops hitting the dry leaves in the trees and the dead ones on the sidewalk.

When I walked home after setting up Demeter's breakfast, the pavement was dark wet, and starbursts of fall burst left and right of my path.

In the evening, there were pockets of puddles, not seen for months.

We'll get tired of it soon enough, even after being cheated of a proper October.  Funny how long the year has seemed, with so few months in it.

 

Left hanging dry

 

A map of today's jet stream

Since mid-September, I have been rather unsettled by the quality of the daylight, particularly at dawn and dusk. 

It took me some time to figure how what the problem was.  Slowly, I realized that the light really isn't odd for the time of year.  The temperature has been.

The heat hasn't been oppressive in Victoria, but it's been warm, like a temperate summer day.  

Summer.  Not autumn.

It's been warm enough that local berries have been available for more than two months later than we would normally have them.  They were late, of course.  My journals are full of comments about how cold it was in May and June.

When I walk out in the evenings, I'm startled by how soon the sun sets.  It's setting at the normal time for just past the equinox, but my skin expects the light to linger into mid-evening.  The quality of the light seems unfamiliar, because it's not accompanied by rain.  Just as I couldn't put my fleece tops away in June, I cannot yet part with my summer cottons and linens.

I gather the problem is the jet stream.  For weeks and weeks, it has been hanging in a high loop at the top of the province of British Columbia.  When we're south of the jet stream, things get warm.

Now, according to the map, which I found at netweather.tv - it's pretty nifty; it's interactive - the dangling loop of jet stream will drop below us in about ten days, at which point, things will get recognizably autumnal.  

It may be too late for the salmon, though.

Evening, and I look to the south, as I walk our neighbourhood.  The sky is a light yellow colour above the purple peaks of the Olympic Mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  It's a colour I associate with winter, but without the damp and cold.  I shiver, anyway.

Perspective

I talk to the trees...

 

As we slip past Thanksgiving into the weeks preceding Hallowe'en, it becomes darker in the morning.  The sun is still hiding behind the horizon, as I set out in the half-light, and I'm a little startled to spot my shadow -- until I realize that the streetlights are still on.

The side street where I make my first turn has become a dim tunnel formed by the arches of the ancient shade trees standing sentinel on either side; they whisper silkily, as the hummingbirds click far above my head.  These will be the last trees to change colour, usually in early to mid-November.

Our native trees, the arbutus and Garry Oak, have been suffering for a while, but this past summer, the longer than usual drought and the truly alarming heat dome that struck us in mid-June, have taken their toll on all our shade-givers, particularly the older ones -- and we have lots of really old trees in our neighbourhood.

Experts say that the Pacific gales, which should be starting up soon, will cause extra damage this year to the weakened evergreens, oak, maple, and chestnuts.

"Are you okay?" I murmur to one enormous twisted trunk as I pass.

No reply.  Just the hiss of the morning wind in the leaves.

Bone idle

This time last year, I was locked out of my blog, and making almost daily descents down Linden Avenue, from Fernwood, through Rockland, then down into Fairfield.

Almost exactly a year ago, I glanced to my left, and was halted by this sight.

Someone having trouble letting go of Hallowe'en? A social commentary on texting? The ghost of Christmas Future?

Bye-bye November. Advent begins in earnest tomorrow.

Often I stop with his words on my mind

On All Saints' Day, the trees are raining leaves like heaven raining souls.

I'm striding up Cook Street, wearing my packsack, so my hands are free, and the leaves are swooping in my direction.  I catch two, and make wishes for my daughters.

When I did this in Ottawa, there were also wishes for myself, but they mostly involved returning to Victoria, and here I am, so I make carefully generic wishes for my girls.  Best not to get too specific with wishes made for others.

I've been watching films about Oscar Wilde lately, and both featured a quote from Lady Windermere's Fan (1892, Act Three):  "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

This morning, I feel a brief November chill in my heart, but only time will tell.

Speaking of leaves and souls:

Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan, Simido
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan
Si w bon gangan, sove lavi mwen
Nan mizè mwen ye wo Oh!

Willie works as the garden man;
He plants trees, he burns leaves,
He makes money for himself.
Often I stop with his words on my mind.
Do spacemen pass dead souls on their way to the moon?

(The lyrics of "Feuilles-oh" are in a Haitian Creole, and translate something like this:
Leaves, heal me from my pain Oh!
My child is sick I’m rushing to the voodoo priest’s, Simido
If he is a good healer, he will heal my pain)

Then I got tired and left

Last November, I made time.

So often, I've looked at the Gorge Waterway from the bus, as it takes the loop en route to Silver City. It was a glorious morning, so I left home a good hour before I had to, and got off the bus, misguidedly, at a hairpin curve on Gorge Road, but made it across unscathed.

And there it was. My adolescence.

An uprooted tree, had toppled head down in the Gorge, wasps buzzing around its corpse. Was it there when I cycled along here in Grade Nine? Am I really so old?

There were the same steps, the one leading down into the water. I used to sit here, waiting for the boy I secretly loved - who was in love with my best friend, of course.

I almost wanted to balance along the very edge, as I did as a nine-year-old, when the bricks were being slowly piled. Beyond was the playground, swings still there, but in a slightly different location. No teeter-totters in this litigious age. The clammy change-room for swimmers oblivious to concepts such as fecal counts stands behind, and in front, a bank of vegetation blocks the view of the beach.

I turned up the steep incline leading to the crosswalk. My legs remembered it better than my head. At the intersection, there are now traffic lights, and a push-button walk signal in the direction of my old elementary school.

No more "Stop students! Traffic through!" sung out by a military-inspired student crossing-guard trio, marching down to their corner:  
Left! Left! Left! Left!
I had a good job and I left! I had a good job and I left!
First, they hired me, then they fired me, then I got tired and left!
Left! Left! Left!

Up Admirals Road, where a huge yellow seniors residence has replaced the corner-store, and a couple of houses. I glanced in, and a lady in a dressing gown waved.

I waved back.

On up the hill to the duplex. An older lady was already peering down the drive.

"I never realized there was a house back there."
"It's a duplex. I lived in this one by the street, and the Wardens lived in the back one."

She told me how she and her husband, newly-wed, got together a thousand dollars for a down-payment on a modest house we could see from our standpoint. I thought to myself that a thousand dollars would have been a humongous amount when this lady was a young married. She was telling me her life story as the bus I meant to catch rolled by.

I caught the next one.

If the dew should rise in the web

This morning, I looked out at a sea of fog.

As I sat on the edge of my bed, and applied my face, I saw vague figures emerge from the mist, getting clearer and more distinct - although still shadowy - as they approached the chain-link fence that surrounds the middle school across the street.

Then, just as suddenly, they retreated in a raggedy line strung out across the school yard, running, chasing and racing like the edge of the ebbing tide. They vanished, one by one, into the off-white.

And I saw spiderwebs everywhere, edged in moisture.

There's a web-wreath in this picture!  Click to enlarge and see if you find it!

When I had dressed, and was heading down the street that faces my balcony, on the way to my morning coffee, I got a closer look at the wreaths and doilies, so retrieved my camera from my knapsack.

As I snapped, a woman called to me.

"Have you seen these?" she asked, and I joined her to gaze open-mouthed at a shrub festooned with dripping webs, rather like a Christmas tree draped with spooky lace.

"It's like an infestation," she said. "There hasn't been rain or wind to destroy them."
I pointed out that spiders are actually a pretty good weapon against far nastier infestations, and told her how all this put me in mind of my favourite play. (You can say such things to a stranger in Fernwood.)

In The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry, Jennet Jourdemayne, an accused witch facing the prospect of immolation at dawn, describes how approaching death has brought her into a sharp awareness of life and time:

I've only one small silver night to spend
So show me no luxuries.  It will be enough
If you spare me one spider, and when it spins I'll see
The six days of Creation in a web
And a fly caught on the seventh.  And if the dew
Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.

Shortcut

On this day, last year, we left our house in Ottawa for the final time, moving into a hotel for our final days in Hades.

Younger daughter and I have discovered that, if you make your way to the Sunken Garden at Butchart's in late October, you can have a taste of an Ontarian fall -- without the rest of the Ontarian year.

Not so much a gallop as a trot

When I was a youngish girl, not quite a teenager, it was my almost daily habit to walk a long length of railway track behind my house. I was young, vigorous, and unafraid, and I would cross the middle of a unsided trestle high above Helmcken Road, and then stepping on the ancient railway ties, go for miles, although it probably wasn't much more than a kilometre or so. Did this for three years, and although I met with a handful of adventures, only met one creepy guy and got one tick - not at the same time.

That's the Bay Street Bridge through the berries

Some years later, they transformed the old unused line into a network of paved trails, leading from Vic West all the way to Sooke - easy for walkers to do sections, and safe cycling, as well.

A few years before we left Victoria for Hades, they rebuilt the old Selkirk Trestle, which links Vic West with the neighbourhood of Burnside across the Gorge Waterway.

Southern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

And yet, despite returning to Victoria for seventeen summers, I never made it over to the Selkirk Trestle, although I'd seen many beguiling pictures of it.

I was determined to right that omission today. CBC Radio informed me that it was "perfect autumn weather", and I had carefully checked my route, because Vic West is one of a handful of Victoria neighbourhoods that is unfamiliar to me, even though I lived in Esquimalt for years.

For the first time, I made my way over the new, silver Johnson Street Bridge, which, amid much controversy, has replaced the blue one. I turned right on Harbour Road and six minutes of trotting past industrial areas brought me to the winding path that hugs the shore looking out over the Upper Harbour, just below the Bay Street Bridge.

Harbour taxi

Pick-up points for the tiny Harbour Taxis double up as look-outs; they seemed to be doing a reasonable business taking Japanese tourists to and fro.

And kayakers were having a lovely time, ignoring the roar of machinery near Rock Bay and a pile of crushed cars sparkling in the clear October air.

I noted the locations of restaurants for future reference, and was grateful for a clearly indicated and well-timed public washroom, but on the whole, I was startled at how residential this leg of the Galloping Goose is. It's lined with colourful condominiums and apartments. Every picture I've seen of "the Goose" is quite rural-looking, and there have been a few news reports over the years of muggings and sexual assaults in the quieter areas.
I, however, was surrounded: by dog-walkers, stroller-pushers, cyclists, young families, snow-haired seniors, tourists and, of course, joggers. It wasn't crowded, y'understand - just not isolated.

Northern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

I reached the Selkirk Trestle much sooner than I'd expected. It's a long foot-bridge which curves across the Gorge, and has a hump in the middle to permit boats to pass underneath. You do have to watch out for the bikes - just as on any shared pathway. The bicycles do come zooming through, including one gentleman, who was old enough to know better, with his eyes glued to what I swear was his cell-phone in a special holder. He seemed to be swerving toward me, and he sort of glanced up casually, and frowned slightly, as I flattened myself against the railing.

The Gorge Waterway stretches way into the west

From the south end of the trestle, I could peer west into my own past. As a nine-year-old newly arrived in Victoria, I lived a couple of bridges down the Gorge, in the Craigflower area. (You can't quite see that from the Selkirk Trestle, but I know the Gorge quite well.)

From other angles I could gaze back to towards Victoria itself, shining behind a dazzling reflections of the sun in the water, or I could simply look down at the odd scales created by the shadow of the chain-link sides of the bridge.

Ancient arbutus

I had resolved to return home via Gorge Road, and had used Google Maps Street View to find the off-shoot from the trail on the Burnside side.

You can click on this to enlarge it.

As I climbed the rather steep path past yet more apartments and condos, I was confronted with this whimsical mural. (It wasn't until I got home that it occurred to me: Oh, yeah! A galloping goose!)
Take a closer look at it, yourself. One of the crows is real.

Sea serpent

When I first came to Victoria, I was nine years old and not familiar with the sea. I'd come upon the kelp floating ominously in the water, or lying lifeless and stinky amid the driftwood, and I'd give it wide berth.

This was swimming threateningly in the Strait of Juan de Fuca off the Ogden Point Breakwater on a breath-taking and flawless autumn day. Today, as a matter of fact.

Moving past the equinox

Hasty haiku

A couple of weeks ago, I was leaving the park with the Accent Snob, using the wooded path that leads past someone's fairy-lit backyard. I suddenly saw what seemed to be a tiny invisible blind being drawn to the ground just to the right of where my foot was striking the dirt. It took me a baffled second to realize that two maple seed-pods had helicoptered down at the exact same time, resulting in this unearthly illusion. Impossible to film or photograph of course -- not that easy to describe, either.

So I'm resorting to haiku.

Helicopter blades
Maple tree pair feathers down
Invisible blind

Nope. Still doesn't work.

Art appreciation

"I never understood the Group of Seven," sighs the barista at Planet Coffee.

"Until I travelled from Toronto to Ottawa in October."

Failing to peak at the cemetery

When the Resident Fan Boy and I took the Accent Snob for his first walk of the day early Saturday morning, the sun was reflecting brightly off the trees and we saw several of our neighbours packing the backs of their SUVs and/or hatchbacks. It was then we knew the autumn colours were peaking. Demeter has a friend in Victoria who would wait for the annual phone-call of her brother in Hades, telling her to book the earliest flight for that fleeting moment when the leaves reach their highest dazzle.

That moment wasn't last Wednesday, but it was the only time I had available to take the twenty-minute walk from our front door to Beechwood Cemetery. I took a few dozen photographs to compare my trusty Nikon with the camera in my iPhone. Here are a few of them:

My first truly successful panorama shot taken with my phone. Click to enlarge.

The Slater family - and some neighbours (digital SLR)

Taken with my phone

Taken with my single lens reflex. All of these can be enlarged by clicking on them.

A final phone shot before heading home. 

Sic transit gloria (write of passage number thirty-eight)

About four years ago, I wrote about a photograph I had snapped of my neighbourhood four years before that. I had thought it was a boring shot and had even attempted to delete it. Years later, I realized it was a record of how the block looked before a catastrophic fire.

So, if you look at the following video, which appeared on my Facebook wall a few months ago, you might not find it that scintillating, but it is an attempt, using Google Street view and 1950s photos, to recreate the streetcar line that used to run in a loop around our neighbourhood. It has interest for me, because it shows the main drag in New Edinburgh and a few snaps later, the corner nearest our house -- only fifty years before we moved there.


This past autumn was a lingering one, and for most of it, I was still making the three-hour round trip to Bells Corners. One of the consolations for this was the Transitway ride along the southern bank of the Ottawa River, and it occurred to me that this is an experience that has probably slipped away forever. Younger daughter is now making the trip home by herself, and, at any rate, is in her last year at her school. Most importantly, Ottawa has embarked on a city-wide conversion of the Transitway to light-rail, and one of the many changes will be a shifting of the western route away from the river.

One October weekday, just after the autumn colours had peaked, I decided to film the bus trip from LaBreton Flats to Lincoln Fields in small segments.

This is the departure from LeBreton Flats.


The land rises up before the bus pulls in to Bayview Station, which has no view of a bay, but the pathways lead down to the O Train that will take you south to Carlton University.

You can't see much for the next couple of stops as the bus hurtles through a man-made canyon - the light rail will probably run through here, but will turn away, I guess, before it reaches the breathtaking entrance of the Parkway with the first glimpse of the Ottawa River.

I will miss this.

And this.


Finally, the last glimpse of the river, deep blue this day with white caps from a strong wind, before the bus veers south to the station at Lincoln Fields.

This experience, ordinary and habitual yet changeable and beautiful, will not come again. Like most things in life, really.

Revelations

One thing I rather like about November is that with the foliage gone, you can see the rivers. (Sounds a bit like I'm clutching at straws, doesn't it?)

About this time, three years ago, I was taking the Accent Snob on what I call The Long Walk. We followed the streets that line the back of the grounds of Rideau Hall, the residence of the Canadian Governor General, following the wrought iron railings until the dog and I reached the Rockcliffe Parkway. From there, just a short walk away from 24 Sussex Drive, official residence of the Prime Minister, I looked out over the Ottawa River to the province of Québec.

This is what I saw one late Sunday afternoon in 2012:

You can click on this to enlarge it.

Writing blog-posts forces you to look things up. It took a bit of scrolling over a Google Map of the neighbourhood to figure out that I was looking at the Paroisse St-François-De-Sales, built in 1840, and standing on the bank of the Gatineau River, just before it meets the Ottawa River, which in turn flows in an easterly direction towards Montréal, where it merges with the St Lawrence.

That late afternoon in Ottawa, it was a nameless ethereal church glowing in the light of a dying afternoon, framed with the tattered remains of autumn.

Phantom leaves

I took this picture on November 4th, 2012. It's the sidewalk behind Rideau Hall, along Lisgar Road, what was left after that autumn's leaves had been swept away.