Dark water walk

On Thursday, I got a new camera (my brother gave me a gift certificate from Henry's for my birthday!), and then took it on a psychogeography walk, my first in ages. I didn't use the camera for much of the walk, because we went into some dark, dark places. We gathered at Warden Station, and the sun had gone down by the time we started out. We went into the Warden Woods and headed south, in the direction of the Harris filtration plant.

We came out of the woods to troop along Victoria Park Avenue, where we stopped briefly for soft-serve ice cream at a McDonalds. Then onto Kingston Road, where presently we came to the densely wooded Glen Stewart Park. There was a sign saying Eastern Ravine, and a wooden staircase leading down into the forest. We started down the stairs. The trees immediately swallowed up the light from the street, and the further down we went, the darker it got. The stairs seemed to go on and on, turning this way and that. Some of us took out cellphones and held them up to try and light the way; they looked like blue fireflies in the blackness. When we finally reached the ground, it was so dark we could barely see the trail. We moved along it, feeling as much as seeing our way, the ones in front yelling out a warning to the others when they hit a tree root or a mud puddle. As we walked, Eric told me about a restaurant he went to in Montreal last week, called Eau Noir, where diners sat and ate in a room that was completely dark. You read a menu before you went into the dark room; you could choose from a selection of appetizers and entrees, or ask to be surprised. Dinner was served by a waiter named Mathieu, who was perfectly comfortable working in the dark room, because he was blind.

Black water gurgled and splashed in the creek that ran alongside the path. For some reason, the ravine smelled faintly and pleasantly of cucumber. We all noticed this.

We reached the water filtration plant, which is finally accessible again after months of construction work. A big waning moon hung over it. We walked through the grounds and down to the inky lake, and threw rocks in. I took photos; I have not yet figured out all the available settings on my new camera, so there's an odd painterly effect in a lot of the photos, like we're wandering around in a de Chirico picture, which is actually what it was like.



More photos here.