Inukshuk

Dreams are made of these
sights on the Waterfront

The Vancouver Sun

is setting

on Canada Place

and the sea

looks rained on.

China and Japan are

microcosms

in a city of happenings

and lights are aglow

on Grouse Mountain.

Winding past the Maple Leaf Store

the smell of blueberries

and Douglas firs

brings me home.

Today is Valentine's Day, and a love poem is due; mine is to the healing spirits of the city of Vancouver. I visited in 2002 and my impression from arrival at the airport to discovering Frida Kahlo at the Van Art Gallery and Zora Neale Hurston at the Van Public Library, to the oldest trees on botanic walks in Stanley Park, the city simply enveloped me in a halo of perfection, a presence that I can only long to experience again. Winter Olympics are in full swing now, despite tragedies and from across the waters my friend Jo at A Majority of Two has delightfully sent me a parcel of Olympic 2010 souvenirs. A beautiful glass/ceramic Inukshuk, a pen carved in the shape of a Canadian Mounty, and a silver keyring. Jo, thankyou so so much for your thoughtful gifts. The Inukshuk sits on my highest shelf far from its Arctic home, where once it would have marked the threshold of the spiritual landscape of the Inummariit, 'the people who knew how to survive on the land living in a traditional way'. Some inuksuit were built to serve as message centres. They could indicate, for example, dangerous places, the depth of snow, the direction of the mainland from an island where seals or fish could be taken. These inuksuit were designed to be messages fixed in time and space. Others were personal notes left on the landscape -- perhaps for a wife to follow her husband at a later date, or as an expression of grief marking the place where a loved one perished.

The traditional meaning of the inukshuk is 'Someone was here' or 'You are on the right path'.
What could be more romantic on Valentine's Day, than these timeless messages of fidelity, faith and hope?

Images of Inukshuk via flickr, travelblog and lodestar