Fishing hole

The Fraser is a busy river, has been since before the white man found it, in the days when war and trade canoes plied the waters from the coast to the canyon. Back then, of course, the shoreline was green. These days, except for a few park reserves and housing development frontages, both shores (all 4 shores, sometimes, where there are islands) from Mary Hill to Steveston and Ladner are piled with storage containers, choked with log booms, busy with factories and warehouses and shipping yards and repair garages and junkyards, scattered with the leavings of a century of industry; smoky, greasy, grungy, rusty; the bird songs overpowered by miscellaneous beepings, tootings, rumblings, clankings.

A nest of rubber and plastic "snakes".

We drove down River Road, dwarfed among all those trucks, to see if the river still lives. And in between industrial sites, we found this:

A short trail leads to a fishing spot.


Straight across from us.


Old, waterlogged boards, and signs of a recent visitor.


Rocks and drowned grasses.


Grass still holding its own.


The spit at the end of Huston Road. Pier belonging to a construction company.


A tiny sandy beach. Fine, clean sand.


Not all the sand is on the shore.


Behind the beach, scrubby bush has captured water-borne logs. Moss covers the oldest. Here, a small fern has found a foothold.


Tiny white shelf mushrooms.


And a pair of mallards.

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