Sunday, October 31, 2004

Lakeshore and Golden Wood

Lakeshore
As of today clocks here in North America rolled back an hour and the precious hours of daylight we get in this latitude dwindle ever faster.

Friday night we had one of the first of our autumn storms. The wind howled for hours around our door and yesterday morning there were branches down and drifts of cedar scales (needles?) on and around our van.

All of which is a long and roundabout way to say that we escaped again this weekend to the out of doors to soak up the last of Autumn's light.

We drove out to Alouette Lake again, intending to walk the 1/2 mile trail down to the beach from the parking lot, but the road was closed because the bridge over Gold Creek was 'under repair'. Disappointed, but not deterred, we went instead to the regular day area and walked everyone down to the boat ramp.

Alouette Lake Again

Gail says she likes this photo!

And this one too!


Boat Ramp


When we got down to the shore the wind came up and I took out my pocket parafoil. The older 3 M's helped me fly it, but Cheryl sat down with the twins, who had their first introduction to our local geology.

Twins on the Ground



The wind came and went in fits and spurts - strong at times then dying away to a whisper - with the kite still waaaay out over the water! Eventually I decided it was time to wind up the kite cord because it just didn't look like the wind was going to co-operate. My 'kite' helpers disappeared as quickly as the breeze and I had to pull in the kite myself.

Kite Helpers


I was in the midst of this process when Cheryl called over that the twins were starting to get cold - not to mention quite dirty from the sand and gravel they were attempting to ingest. So we packed up kit and kaboodle and hiked back up to the van.

The Golden Wood
It was on the way home, still feeling unsatisfied about how much we had actually walked, that Cheryl suggested we take the kids round to 'the duck pond', meaning Green Timbers Urban Forest, near where we live.

The Golden Wood


The forest itself is the public part of a forestry research station started many years ago when 'the city' was far away and the surrounding sections were either Crown lands or farms. The intervening years have brought urban life much closer and now the forest is an island of nature in the middle of our city.

In the Wood


Because the park was originally used for research (like the UBC Research Forest that we visted a few weeks ago), it has a lot of different species of trees, shrubs, etc. Different parts of the park are designed to recreate different habitats in our province. So as you follow the trails you can find yourself in different parts of B.C. every few minutes.

BC Habitat


Cheryl decided to take us off the beaten path around the pond and instead we investigated some trails that we haven't been on in quite a while. The kids thought this quite adventurous and commented that the grassland part of the park we were walking through was like the African plain. Madeleine and Michael spent a minute or two pretending to be lions and leopards. As Cheryl was pushing the stroller through the wet squishy grass, I imagined a covered wagon of the pioneers.

High Plain



The pond itself is a man-made water feature about 1/2 hectare in area that the ducks who migrate past every year have taken quite a liking to. In light of this I find it ironic that the local bird society people waggle their fingers at us for feeding day-old bread to the ducks while proclaiming that we are "making the ducks dependent on human sources of food." I want to reply, "So, what did they do before this man-made pond appeared?"

Pond Creatures

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! What great photos. My favorite is the picture of the tree from the base looking up. Very nice! Rick Brown