I consider the cycle. A drop of sea thrown in spindrift, caught on a breeze, joins a cumulous fluff in chill air before strafing to stratus. Moving in wind from the sea, blowing landward, it reaches the peaks of a long coastal range, becomes heavy, condenses, breaks free and scrims through the cold as it freezes, a snowflake unlike any other. It falls to a crusting of snow, the cusp of glaciation, where it sits for a very long time. Until things start to warm. The crystalline structure collapses, a trickle of fresh water, a gradual stream, now a creek that flows into a river. A sifting of silt melds the water with land on an oceanward trek, the salt pull of the moon, as the water returns in a muddle of algae and sea. That’s what I’m looking at now.

Where gulls tack a low sky, a heron high-steps the shallows, and kelp adds a tang to the air. Behind me, past the lip of the tide, a tousle of hemlocks are piercing the sky. It brings a smile as I recall a local business named for that pine, an operation that printed paper-based maps, some of which I helped to create. What fascinated me about that whole process, the artisanal science of map-making, was its illusory nature, a hint of clairvoyance turning notions, perceptions, into something concrete.

The dreaminess I associate with this facet of geography came to mind when I drew up some charts, rudimentary cartography, to accompany another book. I was fiddling with coastline and colour, something to share with designers, when I momentarily lost visual perspective. Looking at what I’d created, it was no longer obvious which side of the map-line was water or land. The addition of familiar tones, however—shades of blue for water, green and khaki for land—gave it commonly used points of reference. Ah, yes, that must be terra firma, while that’s a river, a lake, or the sea. I thought of this moment when I gazed at a map on a museum wall, a depiction of islands and ocean drawn by a seafaring people for whom water was the primary element, channels for exploration and trade. Land, on the other hand, was the extraneous part, where one might replenish or rebuild a vessel before returning to frequented waterways. By shifting not only colour but also perspective, an inversion occurred. What previously appeared as dry land became water, and vice versa. Perception determined reality, or in this case what was a landmass as home base and what was out there as the beyond of the sea.

In that rambling traverse of Vancouver, what started those neighbourhood strolls was the city motto, “By sea land and air we prosper.” Again I consider that tagline. A previous generation trying to sum up a city, economically at least, in a handful of words. The fact that “By sea” starts it off says it all. This is a water-based centre. From a settler perspective, one founded on resource and trade, and that meant our waterways. Still does, to a large degree. From the ports of Burrard Inlet to the Fraser River’s splayed mouths, not to mention the roadways and rail line termini that feed these shipping lane hubs.

Much like the motto implies, this is a prosperous centre, a conglomerate of abundance, yet replete with lack too. Like so many cities, thriving, striving, surviving, a mosaic of culture and hope. To reintroduce this locale, Vancouver is one of the country’s most diverse cities, with English not being the first language of half the population. Most residents are what the Government of Canada labels “visible minorities.” At first I found this notion ludicrous, the majority deemed a minority. Then I rethought it. Maybe it simply conveys that no one cultural group is in a majority—a fact that I like, knowing the city is truly varied, what I’d call proper community. Meanwhile, this sprawl of humanity continues to rank as one of the world’s most livable cities, as well as one of the most expensive.