You're the one!

Lulu Island, just northwest of us in the delta, is a watery place, a flat, wet land where blueberries grow wild, where fields are red with floating cranberries in season. Much of the island is, or once was, acidic peat bog, similar to our own Burns Bog. The Richmond Nature Park even has a quaking trail, a section of the bog made of a thick layer of decaying vegetation, floating on the soaking wet peat so that it bounces as you walk. Kids love it.

When it rains, the deep ditches (I think you could lose a small car in a few of them) are full of brown water; bog runoff. And the drainage pipes under roads vibrate from the urgency of the water racing to the sloughs and the Fraser river.

Laurie found this rubber ducky tossed to one side by the current.

Valiant little traveler

Roaring rapids

Will he brave the current again?

The duck, like the lumber, the pipes, and the bricks, has been stained by the tannins leached out of the peat, although the duck has lost some of it to scrapes along the way. These bottles we found lying on the bank are "tanned" to a nice leathery colour.

Tannins provide the red or brown colour of many of our foods, too. Nuts, some fruit, and even chocolate, for example.

We left the duck deciding whether to dive or not. I'm sure he did, eventually; he was vibrating with impatience. (Or with the motion of the pipe.) If you ever see, floating somewhere in the ocean, a brown and yellow rubber ducky, say hello!