“Beautiful British Columbia” as they call it for all the beautiful reasons. Sure enough nature resides there in full bloom throughout twelve months of the year…each day of the year, every year! If there is any wisdom running through my veins today, any seasoned poise and calm in my walking on this earth today, a major chunk of credit goes to my experiences of listening and confiding in the great silence of the Rockies, the peaceful rustles of magnificent trees, endless space, the carefree wild life that shows up all of a sudden in random front yards, the selfless flow of Fraser River…the pulse of my life owes a lot to Beautiful British Columbia!

The wilderness in nature is similar to the wilderness in life…pertaining to the structural wear and tear, the negotiations and outcomes of steep slopes regardless of dampness and mist, human life runs parallel to nature. The strenuous journey on tumultuous paths of isolated grieves, challenges and fears makes life tough but just one look at the openness of committed Pacific Ocean under the vast skies would reassure me of my will power and soothed my bruised human ego. Both the Pacific Ocean and endless blue skies do not leave or abandon each other even for a fraction of a second. They watch over each other lovingly…just like my few lucky stars watch over me no matter how self-centered and preoccupied I can get unconsciously. I inter breathed with these forests as many a times as I walked through trails leading me to the granite cliffs of Big Chief Mountain (Squamish, BC)… they responded to my inner upheavals… and my deepest roots are safe all across the shorelines of various beaches on Sea To Sky Highway and of course throughout Beautiful British Colombia!

The fully automated skytrain running on grade-separated tracks on elevated guideways overviews not only the fast paced scenes of the metropolitan Vancouver (and Greater Vancouver) but also major parts of natural beauty that BC is blessed with more than any other part of the vast lands of Canada. BC is perhaps Mother Nature’s most spoiled child for she has bestowed upon the entire province an incomparable amount of charismatic scenic beauty. My numerous commutes in The Expo Line, The Millennium Line and The Canada Line witnessed how majestically tiny little tug boats carried the weight of straight rows of logs of lumber in Fraser River, how colourful sailboats tried to stay afloat on playfully raised tides of omnibus and omnipotent Pacific Ocean on bright sunny mornings and how proudly cruise ships carried cheerful travelers to the breath taking beautiful holiday destinations of their dreams…as I would sit in my next to window seat in skytrain on the world’s longest cable supported (transit-only) bridge, The Skybridge to cross the Fraser River. The dynamic and interwoven rims of the Pacific and four chambers of my heart have many similarities… we are both following unled directions, carrying out duties, keeping secrets in our depths and bearing weights both the Pacific and I are enroute to new discoveries. The ocean and the tides of my mind are parallel…with difference being that Pacific is awesome and boundless whereas I am awestruck and thankful yet tired sometimes of dead ends or my encounters with split ends of long roads… our journies go on… Resilience keeps me company!

Often I went to different beaches in Vancouver; I loved sandy beaches the most because they helped me see better at the distant mountains. I would sit still on a smooth log of my choice and admire the great mountains, yonder the mighty ocean …they challenged my complacent courage and conviction. These still looking beautiful gigantic rocks, mostly covered with Alpine Fir, Juniper, Western Larch, Spruce and an endless variety of Maple often draped in snow have their own rhythm and an order of existence, I am always in an awe of them. They have the power to make me feel small and intimidated…I am almost nonexistent in my own eyes in front of them. I would wonder why both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in one’s life as hardcore parallel realities. It is always one’s conscious choice however which secret path one tends… put up with a stench of a rotten wedlock within the so called comfort of a four walled house as a co-owner or walk out quietly with dignity clutching on tight to one’s only child’s  hand on a cold January morning without ever looking back. When one chooses not to focus on what is missing  from one’s life but is grateful for the abundance that’s present  in love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, when one’s  personal pursuits become paramount and all important (up and above the financial fear factors) in order to bring peace, more than anything else…then illusions of façade and false promises frizzle away, unfulfilled desires get tamed on how to rest in peace and shattered heart learns how to heal itself back to normal…the emotional voids start to fill just like baron trees start to blossom after a looming winter.

Life is just as complicated or just as simple as one makes it. Often Jasmine Mehar comes home from school with all kinds of freshly gained knowledge on stars, constellations, planets, plants, animal and people, field trips and so forth. She discloses all her chapters of the day to me normally on the kitchen table right away as I fix her an after-school snack. “Oh mama I love stars, some of them are very close to me”, she expresses sometimes at bedtime…”and moon can hide behind my thumb you know”, she spills her secret with such an ease and falls asleep. She leaves me wondering though that one may understand the crisscross of the cosmos but not the vain depths of human ego, why this “self” is far beyond the reach and hard to comply and stars are within the range of Mehar’s chubby little fist. The passion and the enthusiasm we show in a relationship or  first ever love (which in most cases subconsciously remain the “only true love), a piece of art, a book, and any experience for that matter spirit away before we realize… we tend to forget that “we have forgotten”. One may be successful to block out important episodes and believe that nothing is permanent in order to move on smoothly in life but still the ongoing clashes between creation and reflection are inevitable…both time and space are daunting factors, some moments pass unobserved while some other remain with us frozen for a lifetime. Universe is complicated for my limited sense and sensibility but the more one understands the universe and nature, especially sub-atomic physics and metaphysics that attempt to encompasses nature and human as one… the more amazing it all is. Even the mental push and pull is amazing at times. With these grains of thought and many more I close my eyes and start to whisper my Hare Krishna Jaap (a continuous Mantra) to calm my overworked emotions down while the British Columbian evergreens rustle with all their might parallel to me to wave off the dark clouds…

– Anoop Kaur Babra