Sleepy Stillness Broken In White Rock

THE STILL MORNING was wrapped in a warm soft mist when I visited the museum in White Rock recently to drop off my Penelope Puddle greeting cards.

It was so early, in fact, that the doors were not yet open. This gave me a chance to take pictures of the pier from a slight distance.

I could see a few people had already started on their strolls. This was a week day so I was mostly seeing mothers with strollers and retired folk along the shore. School is out so there were also children picking spots to build sandcastles before the beach got too crowded.

Reflections of the pier could be seen in the low-tide puddles.

Here is the designated guard of some rather important stuff.

There was barely a breeze to ruffle the air. Nearby was the ever present and very active train track that runs through the waterfront area of White Rock.

Sadly, a few days prior a woman jogging across the track in the late evening was hit and killed by an Amtrak passenger train. Investigations are going on as to how this could have happened. The Amtrak train is shorter, softer and swifter than the freight cars when it runs down the track. Although I did not know the woman, I wished her family strength in their time of sorrow.

People are left to grieve and learn hard lessons from what had happened. When communities exist shoulder to shoulder with a bustling noisy railway its potential for danger can fade away like background music in our minds.

A freight train suddenly appeared to disrupt my thoughts and made the birds scatter. It screamed loudly and shattered the mood of the morning as local artists laid out their wares in a city waking up to one less person being there.

I hoped there was an inkling of truth in the words by author J.K. Rowling when she wrote, “ … death is but the next great adventure.”

Meanwhile, this tragic accident is yet another reminder that the world as we know it could end in the blink of an eye. The time to enjoy life is now and the future (whether one believes it to be fixed or not) will thankfully remain a mystery. Perhaps it really is the way Out Of Africa author Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) once said, "God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road."

To view more sights from around the globe visit Our World at the sidebar.

Visit Postcards From Penelope Puddle to view more BC scenes.

Copyright by Penelope Puddlisms