Mostly photos today, of our day at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary.
After a busy week family-focused week in Vancouver, we’re enjoying the slower pace of island beach life, replacing the continuous thrumming of car engines with the occasional drone of a seaplane.
But peace can be found in the Greater Vancouver area as well. Just looking at the soothing natural tones of these photos restores my sense of calm. My Toronto blogging friend, Kristin, just posted on discovering the natural wonders of her busy city, and I have to second her appreciation, albeit for a different city. I suspect that if we just look around, many urban dwellers will find that they can get out of the city without too much effort, sometimes even without really leaving it.
It took us less than an hour to get home from here, despite running into some heavy congestion on the way back. And we got up close and personal with a couple of Sandhill Cranes!
How easily can you get “back to the garden”?
You know, I thought of you often while I was on this adventure, because I think of you as a person who lives amongst so much natural beauty, and yet visits the city on a regular basis. I've spent a lot of time saying: People who live in gorgeous places (i.e. BC) don't understand what it's like to live in a concrete metropolis like Toronto. And now I really have to eat my words. My trip to TO Island was, in it's own way, as beautiful as my time in the NC mountains. And I cycled there in 30 minutes door-to-door.
It was bizarre to look on the city from this place of utter peacefulness. Don't get me wrong, I've gone to TO island many times, but not by bike and water taxi (SO civilized and easy) and never to the beaches, only to the well traveled parts like Centre Island (the kid's area) and Ward's (the residential island). Now that the water is no longer polluted, its value and natural beauty is so increased.
Gotta say, the ability to stop and eat at an awesome restaurant on my way home (I had my pick of a dozen) made it that much more amazing. I really felt like I had it all.
(Seriously, even Europe didn't seem as superior as it usually does.)
Your post about cycling to natural beauty within such a short distance from very urban Toronto really inspired me. The more we all tried to find these spaces within our own cities, the more we might take care of what we have, clean up our waters, watch what we're exhausting into our air.
Interesting that it took getting onto your bike to really see this — a different scale, a different pace.
While we live in the country we can be in town in a very short time. A trip to Vancouver, however, takes some planning. I'd say, with ferry waiting times, it takes about 3.4 or 4 hours to go from home to downtown in the big city.
From locking the door here to parking in our downtown Vanc'r garage, takes us 3 hours, if everything goes just right. We try to plan so that we use that time well, reading the papers we were going to sit and ready anyway, for example, or getting some marking or writing done.
You're lucky being close enough to Victoria that you can enjoy city perqs but still live in a country environment.
There is an oasis of calm just a few blocks away. We are fortunate that our neighbourhood is quite quiet.
Your island must be a sanctuary for the soul.
You're in a lovely spot, with rural calm not too far away yet much of what a city offers very close at hand. Lucky!
Getting away from the city is a quick trip to East Sooke Park, or even just to a local beach. Looking out, away from the land, is always restorative. BC is such a wonderful place to live.
You're right that any beach, looking out to the horizon, back to the land, is calming. We're very lucky to live where we do.