A bust of David Oppenheimer – mayor of Vancouver, 1888 to 1891 – stares east, a smear of guano on one ear. I pass ash trees and arrowwood plants where a sign describes shorebirds: oystercatchers, goldeneyes, herons, and grebes. The tide, low and slack, reveals rocks in algae and kelp. A ship puffs in the harbour, and my breath in the chill resembles the exhales of the boat, as though we’ve been cast in a Marlboro ad. A few good mornings as I pass other walkers, a sense of shared space. Were the world still on lockdown, we wouldn’t be here, doing this. The park closed at that time as coyotes took over, reclaiming domain.

Past a fir seeping resin, the look of a gigantic candle. Around the Teahouse and Third Beach, I’m now at the westernmost point of the park, where sea-going tankers are surprisingly close, looming in rust-reds and blacks. The roar of a helijet, basso and throaty, skims under cloud, aiming east. The sea, oil calm. Something about the near-silence, low mist, what I expect to be muting is in fact amplifying the world, an increase in each little noise.

Two cormorants stand on an islet of rock, the look of castaways gauging the tide. The ground here is a mess of patched grass with fir bows and cones, a lumpy pine carpet. A placard pinpoints where I am on a map (you are here). Still a distance to go. At an open gate, the twin peaks of The Lions are depicted in steel. A sign warns of rockfall. Beside me, a high cliff of sandstone and granite with a few clinging alder. I could be staring at a painting by Emily Carr, only larger than any one canvas.

Two geese stand atop Siwash Rock like newlyweds crowning a cake. A lone tree tops the rock with the geese, the look of unruly hair. A herring gull watches me pass. Ahead, a circle of rocks in the water, ancient Salish fish traps, with the smooth sandy slope of a hand-built canoe launch, what could be 4,000 years old. At the base of the Siwash Rock pinnacle, a plaque shares the stone’s legend. “An imperishable monument to ‘Skalsh the Unselfish,’ who was turned into stone by ‘Q’uas the Transformer’ as a reward for his unselfishness.”