Nuff Ting Gwon: Photography, Film & Adventure

We shout “cuidado” (“careful” in Spanish) to each other as we descend into the valley hugging the river below. We need to make our way down about 200 feet to get to the crystal clear river below, but there is no path and the decline is steep… Impossible in many areas. We carefully dig our fingers into the roots of the trees above and carefully make our decent, double checking each branch, rock and root we grab onto in order to test its trustworthiness. We slowly get closer to something we haven’t seen, only heard, but we just “have a good feeling about it”.

Closer to the bottom it becomes slightly more dangerous but we see the river up close at last. About 8 feet deep in the deepest part and crystal clear green water at the foot of a waterfall. The sounds, the sights the smells are spectacular. All senses are stimulated. We get ninety percent of the way there, but we are now faced with one last obstacle. We need to trek across a fallen tree that’s covered in slippery moss. I start to make my way across to test it out but turn back because it simple wasn’t safe or intelligent. Thankfully, Sam finds a small cliff with a hollowed out tree trunk that we can hold onto while we descend the last 10 feet.

We made it all the way down, and it’s more breathtaking than we anticipated. We jumped rock to rock, trying not to get our feet wet as we make our last few steps towards a big rock in the middle of the river. We find comfort on the rock awarded to us by mother nature herself for making our journey off the beaten path 200 feet above. I looked at Sam, who was perched on the same rock as me, and said “this place is totally symbolic to all of the benefits that carving out your own route in this world has. It’s kinda like with all things… ya know? If you take the time, risk a little, and work a little harder than you would if you took the carved out path above, you will be seriously rewarded at the end. Ya heard?” ** (Footnote - 1) . I loved the symbolism and meaning in what we just did.

We waited until it started to get dark then we made our way back to the town as to not get lost in the woods at night. Getting lost at night in the woods is something I really want to do, but have yet to convince Sam that it would be fun and safe. Using the same approach as our “carve your own path” strategy earlier, we make our way back to a local general store using a new route. Unfortunately, this time we went a little too far in the wrong direction and found ourselves in the most uninspiring, run of the mill residential suburb we’ve ever been through.

Today really boils down to two lessons.

1. Beauty, meaning, love, inner peace and deep, rich experiences are found on the road less traveled

2. Apparently so are the suburbs.

Labels: Vancouver

View from our front yard at sunset


View of downtown

Labels: Vancouver

Edith Piaf playing in the background, the mountains in the foreground. This is my first morning in Vancouver. My life once again positively transformed through change. Just over 24 hours ago I was celebrating new years in a park in Kensington market in Toronto with my sister and a couple close friends. We had a small stereo system with us, so with fireworks exploding in the background, the roar of the bars and the not so impressive sound coming from our $30 stereo system we spent the last second of 2007 at the top of a park slide and we brought in the new year by sliding down the slide and making our 2008 wish.

Toronto started getting hit with a snowstorm at around midnight but it didn’t slow down our outdoor conversation, dance and music party. Shortly after warming up at a nearby house we made our way to Kum Jung Yen, a grungy but welcoming little restaurant in the heart of Toronto’s China town. The restaurant doesn’t play music so we used our portable music player to entertain the full restaurant our mixes of Wu Tang Clan, Tribe called quest and Hot Chip. Nobody seemed to mind.

I then waited up until 4:30 in the morning for Samantha to finish work. We spent the next hour getting ready for our 5:30 airport cab pick up. We barely got our sleepy bodies and 300 pounds of luggage into the cab before departing to the airport.

The snowstorm was now getting worse but we made it to the airport with much time to spare. After paying almost $200 in overweight charges for all of our baggage we made it (¾ asleep) through security. Sam fell the other ¼ to sleep just after the metal detectors and passed out on the floor of the airport.

I stayed up taking pictures of her until our plane arrived. And of course we sit beside the lady with the worst cackle laugh on the plane who found great humour in a Jackie Chan movie. Apparently she’s one of 8 people in the world who find him funny. So after having left an hour late because our plane was frozen and needed to be sprayed with antifreeze solution, we landed in Vancouver. We threw our stuff in our sublet and we immediately went out for a quick walk to the grocery store. After getting settled in we both passed out early.

At 7am this morning we decided it was time to explore Kitsalano neighbourhood, Kit’s beach and Granville Island. We spoke with locals on the beach early morning and slowly made our way to the outdoor market. We cruised around very slowly, checked out many of the local shops, purchased fish and cheese and made our way back home through downtown.

After having a glass of wine at a friends house I’m ready to call it quits. Looking forward to seeing what’s next.

Labels: Vancouver