Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, The Wife and I drove up to Sidney, near the tip of the thumb of lower Vancouver Island, driving along Highway 17, on the eastern edge of the peninsula.
Sidney is a retirement community and tourist town, near the ferry landing of Swartz Bay (with ferries to the smaller islands and to the mainland) and almost adjacent to Victoria International Airport (YJJ). The downtown is filled with small shops and restaurants and is a short walk from the sea — the main drag extends to a seaside plazza.
The day was sunny, with gentle breezes and cool enough for long sleeves but without need for a jacket. I love pleasant weather, and winter seemed long, so just being out of doors was a pleasure.
She wanted to look at a dress that had caught her eye on a previous trip, and as I waited in the store I spotted an ideal utensil crock for my kitchen. My collection of utensils had gradually grown to the point where the crock I had was too small — I had to jam in the utensils. So I bought the new crock, which has spruced up my kitchen a bit:
The new crock is still somewhat crowded, but it’s a noticeable improvement — and it looks better, its predecessor being plain red.
Purchases in hand, we wandered along toward the seaside. We stopped at the Fickle Fig Farm Market Express to get a sandwich. They had a vegetarian option, but with brie (I follow a whole-food plant-based diet) and rather too much bread, the bun being large.
I was intrigued by a sandwich made with red-lentil bread, which I’ve not had. That also included a cheese, but the bread was thinner — slices instead of a mountainous bun. It also included lomo, of which I had never heard. We asked, and the server described how it’s made, but not of what. Turns out it’s pork. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I got one, as did The Wife.
The filling was okay, and the bread tasted good and had a crumbly texture very like cornbread. We ate at a table and bench on a brick-paved plaza overlooking the sea and in the company of a variety of pigeons — rock doves — each sporting a slightly different outfit. They turned out to be extremely interested in crumbs, even small crumbs, which the bread readily provided, so we all, humans and dinosaur descendants, had a fine time.
It was here that I took the above photo of Mount Baker. It’s an international photo, Mount Baker being in the US — about 73 miles away as the crow flies.
After our repast, we returned a the less-traveled way, down the small road on the western edge of the peninsula, along West Saanich road. Just past Ardmore we came to Coles Bay Regional Park, and walked on a good trail through a small but wild forest to emerge on the large flat shore of a bay.
Even the short hike through a terrain in which all I could see were the trees around me was settling and centering — “forest bathing,” as the Japanese call it (though they say “shinrin-yoku”) — the air was cool, the shade was pleasant, and we were surrounded by active life — trees, moss, vines, shrubbery — that moved at a much slower pace than ours. Perhaps it was too brief to be forest bathing, but even a forest dip reminds one that there’s more to life than pavement and hurry.
We drove on down the peninsula, through Brentwood Bay and at last to home. It was a day of no big event, like most days, but generous with small pleasures. I felt very good this morning as I looked back on it.