If you explore a small town one day, you may find relics from the past. We explored and found spring had made its entrance. The relics were holding their breath, their floor boards creaking, their paint peeled, and several someones had performed makeovers. The town, once fuelled by coal and its miners, now kept breathing with bikers and commuters. A pleasant day on Vancouver Island.
It’s a popular biking town. Lots of locals and visitors wearing biking gear and mountain bikes in abundance (even if I only got one photo as proof and it didn’t make the cut).
Lots of interesting little stores, a variety of places to eat from healthy choices to the not-so-healthy, a popular craft brewery, and a hostel dedicated to all the mountain bikers coming to town. Surprisingly there were blocks of the mining company-built homes still lived in. Many well maintained, some renovated, and a few in need of a band-aid or two. More relics with a new life.
Time to head home.
“Storytelling is the most ancient form of education. It is about the remembering, making, and sharing of images that bind together time, nature and people. Stories, like the sacred plants, are medicine and food come from the Earth. They remind us that we do not stand alone. Through them, we live in the body of coyote and crow, tree and stone. In this way, we confirm our relationship with all of creation.”
~Joan Halifax
If you explore the forest, the moist cedar-scented forest, you’ll find frilly moss hugging every trunk, lazy ferns, and shy trillium. You’ll hear robins and woodpeckers and witness the sun descending from the heavens, piercing it’s way through old-growth trees.
In the end … did you know: Trillium love ants (and need them for seed dispersal) but dislike white tail deer. I suspect I’ll remember that every time I discover a shy trillium in the forest.
Diane, what a beautiful area you live in!
I love the old shops and signs, complete with creaking floorboards and peeling paint. So much character here.
Thank you so much for sharing this here.
Nice pics of Cumberland – I love that place! So cozy 🙂 Dwayne’s brother and wife use to live there so we’ve spent some time up there.
all of these images have their own unique element that i like
the top one with it’s railings painted their own color
the artwork bicycle
the idea that they let the artist sign their wall art
then, we’re in a more private setting which seems like a tranquil walk
in each of these frames, i felt once again how this is like a sister city to Fredericksburg, but when i got to the menu on the chalkboard with differing chalk colors, i was dumbfounded because there is a cafe there that does the same thing
really odd feeling