On the way up to Tk’emlúps we stopped at a beautiful place that in settlerworld is dubbed “Bridal Falls” (which pretty much looks the way it sounds, like a big bridal gown):

This month we travelled up to Tk’emlúps to stay with a friend for a couple days! A few blocks from her house is the “Little Farmers Petting Zoo”, a place for humans of all ages to come & feed animals (as well as a place for said animals to momentarily avoid the most horrifying parts of animal agriculture).

Cute pigs!

We spent a few hours this month wandering around “BC Wildlife Park”, which is a rehabilitation centre for orphaned and injured wildlife (that tries very hard never to call itself a “zoo” lol). In this place you can find several of the largest organisms on the whole planet, including these rescued grizzlefriends Dawson and Knute:

My FAVE grizzly pic from the set is this one, where they’re both hanging out:

On a bicycle you can go just about anywhere in the lower mainland! Most of the dedicated paths run along rivers, lakes & old railway lines (or else beneath newish skytrain lines). These ones are from a variety of water bodies north from the river where I live:

And THESE ones are all from the north bank of stal̓əw̓ itself:

Lastly, here’s a picture of me:

We visited the ‘George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary’ at ʔəleqsən last weekend! One thing that happened was that this adventurous red-winged blackbird landed on my friend Kim:

But really that was only the START of the bird-related activity. This time of year we were privileged to chill with this sandhill crane, one of the biggest/weirdest birds in the region:

Some navy people were hanging out at Lonsdale Quay today, answering questions & offering tours of their big-ass Halifax-class frigates. One’s called “The HMCS Vancouver (FFH 331)”, and it’s got a little orca on the side. The other one’s called the “HMCS Winnipeg (FFH 338)” and it’s got a little buffalo.

Last weekend Louise and I visited a place that in settlerworld we know as Boundary Bay (in particular a nature park near the bay’s western peninsula, a spot called Point Roberts). The Puget Sound Geographical Names map offers us a better name for this peninsula however: q̓ʷulƛ̕əl̕! (The Musqueam Place Names Map offers us another good name for it: smaq̓ʷəc!)

Before the industrial apocalypse, this area was great for the practice of catching salmon in reef nets. Today, well, it’s pretty good for taking photos haha.

This time of year, a clan of great blue herons comes to nest in a stand of trees near x̌ʷay̓x̌ʷəy̓ (a.k.a. Stanley Park). It’s an amazing thing to watch these pelecaniformes maneuver; they’re giant birds, & yet they seem to glide forever on nothing except air.

Wood ducks can’t exactly glide like these herons do, BUT they clearly have the fanciest color scheme out of any bird in this park! I love their little feather helmets & strangely-narrow necks.

If you were a working person in the place where I grew up, you probably spent years of your life riding the Expo Line to & from some job in downtown Vancouver. You probably saw the concrete bricks arranged on the roof of a particular house, located between Edmonds and 22nd Street Skytrain Stations, spelling out some writing in English: “ISLAM READ? QURAN“

Below the Skytrain line is a cycling path dubbed the ‘BC parkway’, and in February it’s quite nice to walk this stretch from Edmonds back to sχʷayməɬ (a.k.a. the part of New West where I live). On a clear afternoon you can track the position of the sun as it slides below the mountains: proof that this river basin is still one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The water level along stal̓əw̓ rises and falls in complicated ways, hiding and revealing this sandbar. It’s a good place for seagulls and crows (sometimes great blue herons!); though if humans tried to walk on this, their legs would sink 3 feet into the mud.

The City of New Westminster built a wooden boardwalk along this northern bank decades ago, & if you take pictures from the edge of that thing you can almost make it look like a screen from some point & click adventure game! (Maybe one where you play as a bird.)