Cherry Beach Vertigo

My dear and close friend and I took a stroll through Cherry Beach yesterday, on a warm yet breezy Saturday night. The air was balmy, and the skies were pink and hazy. And we saw very different views of Toronto’s downtown core. We chanced upon the remnants of businesses, old and new, poking their heads between derelict trucks and vine-covered buildings. And we gazed on dogs, bicyclists, and the occasional uni-cyclist passing by the peaceful jogging lanes. Perhaps most fascinating was the sight of a rusted green drawbridge.

 I remarked that the weather would be cool this summer, or so the weather reports predicted. But the fact seemed not to faze us at all. Whatever the temperature, we come fully equipped with our jackets and umbrellas. And our bags are big enough to stuff compartments of food and water, should the need warrant it. We are definitely died-in-the-wool Portable Urban Naturalists (PUNs, for short, pardon the PUN).

Cherry Beach is quite the place for skipping stones. We found a few flat ones, and some had skipped up to five times. The ripples of water from skipped stones formed progressively smaller circles, similar to the stacks of round stones you sometimes see on the covers of New Age magazines. I am not sure where this design came from, but concentric circles have a soothing effect on the mind. The gulls were circling nearby, trying to find the occasional scraps of food. I saw one of them almost seem to dive-bomb into the water for an invisible morsel. When we reached the end of the beach, a stone jutted out from a wooded area with the words “Tout Est Possible” ironically inscribed on it, in bright spray paint. If all is possible, where is the path that keeps continuing past the beach?

We walked to another part of the park, close to Ward’s Point, where the bird tracks are slowly replaced with the tracks of dogs. A lone man and his dog were just at the shore’s beginning.  The day was turning into quiet sundown, as we headed closer to a wooded area, and pondered the diversity of families with their dogs, dogs with no families, and dogs with very large trees in their mouths. We wondered, is it better to be near the sea, or in the mountain? My first impulse was to say the sea on account of the vital role of water, but the mountain is perhaps a more diverse place for different species to co-exist.

At one point in the conversation, we started to talk about names of cities and where they originate. Eventually came up about the fascination with heraldry and stamp collecting. Coats of arms used to be such a big signature to indicate the status of families in England and Scotland. I recall being a young boy at 10 years old, fascinated with the ancient family lines, as well as the obscure meanings of heraldry symbols. Philately was yet another somewhat obscure interest from childhood. Collecting stamps seemed a bit unrealistic to me, however, considering that I had no money to buy expensive stamps.  My mom ended up salvaging stamps from the mail-room of her workplace, and I was able to enjoy used stamps from around the world. I seem to remember the most the International Space Year stamps, as well as other stamps commemorating atomic energy, of all things. And I did learn some of the names of countries.

Age 10 seemed to be quite an age of discovery for me. I recall going to libraries where I would sign out books that were way beyond my age and reading level. But the books were about the earliest humans, and my fascination with the ‘almost human’ exceeded my need to understand word for word what those books meant. In retrospect, I think they offer a promise of what is not quite understood but could later be pieced together with a little more time and education. And I had mysteriously ascribed to this thing called “The University” a faraway institution where I could find most of my questions answered.

My fascination for ham radio was yet another such jaunt into unknown territory as a young boy. Judy and I both started to share about how the fascination with unknown places seems to have changed recently, particularly with the advent of the Internet. Do kids these days have the same ability to experience ‘things unknown’, when many things appear answered through cyberspace? What do ‘fascination’, ‘awe’ and ‘wonder’ look like for kids who have such a plentiful access to information?

As I continued into my reverie and our conversation, I didn’t notice the sound of the bell signalling that the drawbridge was about to go up.  A man started to shout at us to get to the other side of the bridge quickly, before it’s too late. We start to see a ferry about to pass through, as we quickly scuffle to the other side of the bridge. But, as I gaze backward to see the drawbridge rise, a funny thing happens to me psychologically. I start to notice the portion of the boardwalk upon which we had walked was now raised higher and higher, with the lifting of the drawbridge. And I experienced a strange vertigo, as though I were still walking on that portion of the boardwalk which was now going higher and higher upward. How is it possible that I could feel this fear, knowing that I was already safely on the other side of the bridge?

And I recognize today that the ‘vertigo’ is none other than the feeling of being caught in a preserved image of the past, even as I recollect it in a clear present moment. Cherry Beach is definitely the spitting image of my past, preserved in amber: the smell of barbecues on a warm family picnic; the sight of a couple warming themselves in front of a bonfire; the sounds of seagulls screeching in the gentle wind. And the fascination of being 10 years old. But is the past real, or is it not a reflection of the moon on water?