Places we've been.... (2)

Comox is a coastal town about halfway between Nanaimo and Campbell River. It is almost joined to another, slightly larger town called Courtenay, which is a touch closer to the main highway. Comox downtown is very pretty, it is neat, tidy, clean and full of nice little stores. It is clear that this is a thriving tourist destination in the summer, and there was plenty of local life right now too. It's known here abouts as a retirement community, and certainly the quiet, tidy feel echoed that. We really liked the place, and would like to live nearby and have Comox as part of our regular life. In some ways it is a little too perfect, almost like one of those science fiction movies where the town is taken over by aliens who try to blend in by doing nothing wrong. Courtenay, next door, is clearly where the original humans have been displaced to - still a nice looking town and with a more varied range of stores and services. It also has the bigger 'box' stores for those times when you need them.

Just a few miles from our place in Parksville is one of the island's many, many parks. Here at MacMillian Park is a stand of ancient trees known as Cathedral Grove. This stretch of forest contains trees over 800 years old, despite many being lost in a fierce windstorm in 1997. The old growth forest is magnificent, having never been cut for logging it retains the diversity of wildlife and leaves dead trees both fallen and standing as habitats and nutrients for the next generations. One of the biggest trees is almost nine metres around, Max did his best to hug it. This is temperate rain forest, which means that the climate is cool and damp, as we are so often reminded, and that means moss and greenery everywhere. Just like Ireland, being on the eastern side of a huge ocean makes for an emerald isle.

What is more amazing, for us, is that this isn't a vacation, this is where we want to live. It'll be important to remember, years from now, that part of the reason we are here is for all this natural beauty, so we must take our opportunities to get out and enjoy it, not get bound up in work, school, activities and everything else that tends to take over when you lose focus on the big picture.