Let's Just Go.

It started the way the best days usually do — with absolutely no agenda. No itinerary. No reservations. No real reason. Just that particular itch you get on a clear morning when Salt Spring feels small and the water looks like it's going somewhere. So we went too.

Tycho was strapped in, snack in hand, already asking questions I didn't have answers to. That's kind of his thing. It's kind of mine too, if I'm honest.

Victoria has this quality I keep coming back to. It's a city that's just old enough to feel like it has stories, but just alive enough that it hasn't turned those stories into a theme park. Old brick buildings that have housed a hundred different things. Mossy walls that have watched generations of kids do exactly what Tycho did — climb them like they were put there for precisely that purpose.

I had my camera. Of course I had my camera. There's a particular kind of photography that happens when you're not "shooting" — when you're just a dad following a kid (ahhem my kid), down a hill, and the light does something ridiculous, and you happen to have your finger in the right place. That's what these are. Almost accidental, I guess.

We wandered down toward the harbour. The city skyline sat easy against the clouds — those big, dramatic Pacific Northwest clouds that make everything look like a film still even when nothing's happening. The boats were doing their quiet boat things and the sea planes were stinking un the place. Tycho was interested in a railing.

There were these wild jellyfish-shaped lanterns strung between the buildings in one of the old squares — pink, orange, purple. Tycho didn't ask what they were. He just looked up at them the way kids look at things that haven't been explained yet. Pure and a little bit reverent.

We didn't do anything particularly remarkable. We didn't hit any landmarks. We ate something. We walked too far and doubled back. Tycho asked if we could live here and I said maybe someday and he accepted that the way kids accept things... completely, and then immediately moved on to something else.

Sometimes the best thing you can do as a parent — maybe as a person — is just go. Leave the plan at home aand let that kid lead. Bring the camera just in case the light does something stupid and beautiful.

It will. It always does.