This afternoon found me on a mountain bike trail I hadn't seen in maybe 8 years. It's a loop on the North Shore connecting a myriad trail types. I was perhaps a bit rusty, okay, a lot rusty, on my technical riding skills. There were parts I've ridden a dozen times that I walked for fear of falling and killing myself. But the cobwebs were slowly cleared away, most of them anyway, and from time to time we got to stop and look around and enjoy the scenery. It was a perfect afternoon and that might have been enough.
But later that day, that night actually, I was fortunate enough to find myself in the company of good souls tucked into an odd corner of Vancouver's downtown east side. Bernadette is a friend of a friend and she opened up her studio to a group of amazing people, kindred spirits. It's hard to describe how magical a time and space it was. Her art lined the walls and it's sincerity was bolstered by evidence of the process that surrounded it. And canvases, a hundred of them or more, stacked against walls, and cataloged in bookshelves. Bernadette had made an incredible rabbit stew and there was fifty, or more, bottles of wine on the counter. It was all very rustic and the way the house was, the low light, the hundred year old walls without insulation, the sloping floors, the perfect music, the excellent company, it felt like I had been transported away from this city to some mythical utopia. I imagined a shotgun by the door that had been used to shoot the rabbit that was in the stew, it would have been possible to believe Bernadette had spent the afternoon in the back yard skinning and gutting the rabbit. And to think I almost didn't go but midway through the night I was inspired to get out, get away, and am glad I did. And can't wait to do it again.
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