Ralph’s Bench
Three wooden slats make up the seat of the bench at Beaver Lake upon which I have been sitting, writing, thinking, dreaming and complaining for many years. I chose the bench originally because of its position in relation to the lake and the trees. It faces more or less west, which means it gets the warm afternoon sun, and looks over a small patch of open water in which mallards and the odd pair of wood ducks dabble. A short distance from shore, a bank of reeds are used for nesting by red-winged blackbirds, who perch on the cattails and call ...
Not quite Walden Pond
For much of my adult life, I have been living in apartments in what is sometimes referred to as the most densely populated square mile in North America, Vancouver's West End. I'm somewhat sceptical of this claim, as it sounds a bit like chamber of commerce spin, not to mention that we northern North Americans tend to overlook Mexico as a part of our continent too, surely an area of population concentration of note. Nonetheless, the West End is an area of significant population density. Density of this sort is an easy thing not to notice when you live in an ...
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