"It looks like someone took the mountains away."

It's rainy in Vancouver today. The view is totally different when it's like this. On a clear day, we can see the mountains really well, but today it looks like someone took some scissors & carefully snipped round the buildings at the waterfront. It's just a wall of white beyond that. The spires of the church & the red gantries on the docks stand out even more against the cloud bank. The view is completely urban--rail yards, busy streets, parking lots, warehouses, buses, the Skytrain, office buildings, storage facilties. Quite a few trees poke up between all these buildings, but virtually all of them were planted--we can't see any natural forests when the mountains are curtained with rain clouds.

Living with this view for a few weeks now, I find it hard to believe I stayed 5 years in the claustrophobic confines of our previous place. The townhouse was three storeys tall, but there was really no view. You could only see houses & other places in the co-op, all of which were within a hundred metres of you. Here the next building in our view that is as high as we are is several blocks away. You might think that in an apartment building--stacked on top of & next to our neighbors closely--we would feel more closed in, but the opposite is true.