Badgers and North Peak Flowers

 





Catharine and Robin have a mother badger and two kits near their house.  We watched them tumble, scoot around, and bite each other for a while this morning.

Look how flat the one in the center is making itself!

Lewisia (Bitterroot)

Lupine and Clarkia

In the afternoon, Eric and I walked up the North Peak, amazed afresh that the flowers of lewisia and clarkia are about the same color and that they bloom at the same time of the year.  What a very cool feat of naming!

Spring on Vancouver Island

Eric, Ray, and Cyndy Looking at Jumbo from North Jumbo on Memorial Day

Spring had arrived in Missoula before we left, winter returned in our absence (9 ½ inches of snow at our house and broken trees all over town), and now: summer days in the 80s.  Missoula blasts through the seasons!   

Waiting for the Elwha, the Ferry We Took in Both Directions

Amphitrite Lighthouse

Out on Vancouver Island, after driving to Anacortes and ferrying to Sidney, we had two weeks of steady spring.  The west coast was gray and showery; Victoria had cool temperatures and, mostly, sun.  After the winter of our discontent, spring in a new place felt bright and perfect for perambulating and surprises--serendipities like meeting a chain mail artist and finding a bagpipe-and-drum band practicing in a pocket park.  In spite of the ankle I sprained a week before we left, we walked and walked, slowly, abbreviatedly.   We found nice places to limp.

Over on the west coast in Ucluelet, the Amphitrite Lighthouse 1.6-mile loop trail and a bald eagle nest were right out the door of the place where we stayed.  The trail resounds with crashing waves, varied thrushes, whistle buoys, and bell buoys.  

The Rainforest Trail in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is almost all boardwalk and, to get to the floor of the forest, long runs of stairs.  In this climate and with the steep slope of the land, we were in awe of the trail crews that built and now maintain all this.

 
The dance-like step the figure takes on warning signs for wet boardwalks and stairs all through the Park almost made me laugh but for the humility of someone limping after a fall. 

South Beach

The trail to South Beach is only 1 mile roundtrip through forest, near the ocean, and past a totem pole, yet we saw few people. At the beach, waves roll in across very coarse sand and reach a band of smoothed, rounded pebbles and stones that tumble and rattle, but to hear this, you have to catch not only waves that go this far up the beach but also quiet times between waves that crash against the headlands enclosing this lovely place. The Park map calls this the "music of stones rolling in the surf," and we went back after a first miss to catch it.

Fish Using a Crosswalk in Tofino

Tofino Bike Racks

We’re glad we chose Ucluelet for our stay by the Pacific and the Park; not being surfers or spiffy toffs we felt a little alien in Tofino, the other town nearby.  We liked looking around (and eating) in Tofino but felt more comfortable in the quieter fishing town.  Of course, time will change Ucluelet, too.  

The other place we stayed, Victoria, surprised us for not having the strongly British feel we expected, for its concentrated walkability, and for not scaring metrophobic me.  We spent a happy week in a hotel near the Inner Harbor choosing from our loose list of saunterable destinations.

 

Since we were staying near the British Columbia Legislative Buildings (Parliament), we walked past them every day.

We took both a self-guided tour and one with a well prepared guide.  She was even ready to answer our question about the animals sticking out their tongues on the BC coat of arms.  In heraldry, animals with their tongues out have power, she said. Because the legislature meets on Vancouver Island, the elk that represents it on the BC coat of arms has its tongue out; the bighorn sheep representing mainland BC does not.  Above them, the British regent’s lion does because Canada is a member of the British Commonwealth.  Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state; she has a Governor General, David Johnston, who performs her ceremonial and constitutional duties, and a Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who, though elected, serves at her pleasure.  Her lion and the elk have the power of speech.   

Rotunda Ceiling with Murals Representing BC's Natural Resources

Shxwtitostel, Ceremonial Canoe

  


  
The beauty of the buildings inside and out is quite moving. During our week in Victoria, we went inside several times to look again at the stained glass windows, rotunda murals, and carved canoe in the Lower Rotunda.  












It honors BC’s First Nations and represents working together; its name, Shxwtitostel, means "safe place to cross the river," or a bridge between peoples.  If only a canoe could help us.

We also sauntered Butchart Gardens, smaller and more flower-focused than the tree-and-sculpture-focused Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver--but splendid.  We saw more kinds of tulips than I knew existed.

 

Quarry Transformed into Sunken Garden

Imagine Jennie Butchart in the early 1900s starting the process of changing this land, including a worked-out limestone quarry, into the splendor that is here now.

 

There were the places people had told us we needed to go, and then there were the happy happenstances.  Looking at boats in the Oak Bay harbor, we saw seals.  Out hunting for shoes for Eric (unsuccessful but fun), we found the cordwainer who made these.  Also out on the shoe hunt, we found ourselves eating focaccia and cake at the opening celebration for the Pandora Street bike lanes, thus learning about the bakery of a native Italian who emigrated to Canada and rides bikes.  We bought our dinner tart and more focaccia there and had a chance to talk with Claudio Costi on another day.   

Reading the local newspaper at breakfast, we read the name of the two new light fixtures at the Empress Hotel, officially “Twill Flowers” (but Eric named them “Potato Chips”).  If it weren’t for the newspaper article, we wouldn’t have even guessed their dimensions.  The bigger one is about 20 feet in diameter and 13 feet high.  



 

Historical-Style Chain Mail in Bastion Square

Wandering into the public library, we read two passages over the entrance: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library” (Jorge Luis Borges, outside) and “You see, I don’t believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that’s the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians" (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, inside).  

Creative 21st-Century Chain Mail

The unexpected: as delicious as icing on a Nanaimo bar.