After making our flight by mere seconds, two nights in a dingy hostel room, one collision with a car, and one shower apiece in four days, the trip is in full swing. On a whim, we decided to assemble our bikes in the Vancouver airport and ride out the front door. Starting the trip without the need to call a taxi and squeeze our fully loaded bikes on a bus felt exhilarating.

Vancouver is ripe with natural beauty and the downtown area has a very European feel. We spent most of our day off exploring nearby parks. Stanley Park, just north of downtown, has replicas of totem poles of indigineous tribes. I learned that totem poles are actually native to British Columbia. The poles were often main posts of the cedar homes built by the tribes. They would decorate the posts to memorialize their genealogy, celebrating the skills and stories of their parents and grandparents.

Jason had some trouble with his contact lens yesterday afternoon, and as he headed back to the hostel for a replacement, I rode to and sit on the seawall underneath the Lion’s Gate Bridge, watching patches of sun traverse the mountains on the north side of the city. That meditative half hour has been my favorite part of the trip thus far. Once Jason returned with sufficient vision, we ventured to the Capilano Brridge, a suspension bridge originally built in 1889 over a gorge in North Vancouver. It hangs 70 meters above the rocky river below. All I could think about as we crossed was the psychological study that people who crossed an unsturdy. fear-inducing suspension bridge were found to be more attracted to an interviewer when they were interviewed in their high-adrenaline state.

I’ve been thinking a lot these first few days about who I hope and expect to be upon my return from this trip. Part of me desperately wants to hold on to all the magic of the past year, not ready to forge a new identity. I’m struggling with how to move forward without losing a sense who I’ve become in the past few months.

During a tour of the forests in North Vancouver, our guide pointed out some magnificent Douglas Firs. The trees are quite large and live for hundreds of years. The park was covered in them. But because of their dense branches that create a canopy over the forest, less suunlight has been getting through to the forest ground in the last hundred years or so. Without sunlight, new seedlings can’t survive. There are no young Douglas Firs in the park, and the ones that stand strongly now will all die out in the next few huhndred years. At first, I felt sad for this forest, seeing so clearly its impermanence, even in timescales longer than we can observe. But I then inspected the new growth on the forest floor: hemlocks, ferns, and bright green mosses. A new, transformed forest given birth by the old one. Douglas Firs will disappear from the Vancouver forests. But just as the totem poles of the Native British Columbians serve to memorialize the past generations, the new forest will be indebted to the Douglas Firs for its beauty.

Today we cross the US Border - Wish us luck!

Check out Jason’s Guide to Survival in Vancouver.

Posted on August 27th, 2007 by Derrick
Filed under: Thoughts