Exploring the unlikely intersections of walking, photography and making
Here begins a series of jaunts in the key of white. This week, I follow the Capilano River in North Vancouver. It’s December 26 and the terrain is unexpectedly wintery, the weather too cool for a prairie boy looking for a reprieve from the chill back home. I start high up in the posh residential... Continue Reading →
In its 2017 “Best List: 16 Scenic Train Trips”, National Geographic Traveler magazine highlights Via Rail’s The Canadian. Writer Everett Potter had this to say about it: “After three decades of riding trains all over the world - rural China, the Swiss Alps, Latin American Jungles - I am still thrilled by a classic rail... Continue Reading →
WalkClickMake is all about getting lost. Lost in the world. Lost at sea. Seeing afresh. Leaving home, then finding it again. A home made different by the journey. Here are some ideas for getting lost in 2017. Walk from the centre of your community to its outer edges. We are all familiar with our own... Continue Reading →
Grind indeed. The Grouse Grind lies outside any conventional notion of walking. This is no promenade. Want to commune with nature? Find another trail. This is sheer exercise, a cocktail of pure adrenaline spiked with a shot of danger. The Grind rises from the residential edge of North Vancouver and steadily, steeply rises up the... Continue Reading →
For Gail and me, Remembrance Day in Winnipeg always includes a walk down Valour Road for a service at a small park on Sargent Avenue. This year, I am in North Vancouver, on my way to their Remembrance Day service. It’s a one-hour walk to Victoria Park, an eastward trek that leapfrogs suburban neighbourhoods and... Continue Reading →
This was a trip born out of loss and passing through uncertainty. At 4:00 AM on November 9, I said my good-byes to Gail and Styxx at our front door and set out on foot for the Winnipeg airport. I was on my way to Vancouver. Just a week ago, a beloved aunt passed away.... Continue Reading →
The title of my blog is WalkClickMake. As the subtitle says, my goal is to explore the unlikely intersections of walking, photography and making. One of those “unlikely intersections” is my growing collection of small, affordable books. Each volume is at the “making” end of a process that begins with a walk, leads to a... Continue Reading →
In this snowless domestic landscape, Christmas lights glow, framing the distant mass of Grouse Mountain. Green, treed slopes rise above the roofs until capped by a dusting of snow. It’s one of those rare straight lines drawn by nature, separating a ribbon of temperate green from a broad band of white above. As I start... Continue Reading →
The urban overlay of North Vancouver, the city, can come across as an amorphous mass without any sense of centre. Industry and commerce line the harbour front in a continuous stream of innocuous buildings. Inland is the repetitive grid of streets, for the most part small-scale residential houses with the occasional high rise apartment punching... Continue Reading →
If I were to choose a time to walk in the woods, this would not be it. But here I am, walking along Mosquito Creek, engulfed in the deep, dark shadows of a long winter night, straining to see two steps ahead through a hard rain. *** Some time ago, my sister and her husband... Continue Reading →