A year ago I lived in a house with four other university students. To get to class each day, you could walk 20 minutes through pleasant middle class neighbourhood streets, or you could take a usually crowded 5 minute bus ride. The walk is pleasant enough. Through a rather quaint business section and then through nice neighbourhoods with somewhat interesting architecture. The bus ride is faster, unless you're waiting during rush hour. But the various nuances and smells of public transportation in this city make one weary quite quickly. I don?t even want to begin to count how many times I traveled to and from school from that house.

There was also a large park a few blocks from the house. One day I was walking to school with a friend and we decided to take the route closest to the park, as there were several we could take. There are trails through a forested area of the park and for whatever reason we decided that day that we would find a way to school through the forest.

This shot is about 200m down a slight hill from the opening of the trail. The trail winds somewhat unimpressively at first, but then takes a ninety-degree turn left where the walker is presented with this view. All sounds seem to be sucked out of the world as you take in the scale of the trees. Everything seems large since both sides of the trail are bordered by hills. In the summer the dense trees block out most of the light and create the feeling not so much of a cathedral or temple or other such cliches, but simply of a vast room.

Every time I visit this area the thought soon hits me that all of this exists in one of the more densely populated regions of the planet, in one of Canada's most industrialized cities. Literally tens of thousands of people live within a 3-minute drive of this very spot, yet you are aware only of yourself.

While I love this picture and this place, at the same time it reminds me of the one time I didn't have a camera. One morning in the late fall I left the house around 7am and took this route. I had intentionally woken up early so that I could walk around other loops in the trail before my morning class. I had my CD player along and was intending to try to work my mind through several things that had been bothering me at the time. The sun was burning through low clouds and mist was rising from the dew on the ground. As I reached this point in the trail, shafts of sunlight were radiating through breaks in the leaves and reflecting off the dew covering the ground. A light mist held under the tree canopy and all else was still. I couldn?t help but stop. In that moment I became completely unaware of all of the problems that had prompted me to make this trip, and that more than all the thinking I would later do was the most helpful. That moment is also one of the reasons I try to carry a camera most of the places I go now. However, the memory is still unblemished in my head to this day.

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