A pleasant winter walk in Deer Lake Park

Being an overly Vancouver-centric person without a car, I was skeptical about going for a walk in Deer Lake Park. I’m such a wimp: the start of the trail that does a loop around the park is a mere 20-minute walk from the Metrotown SkyTrain station.

What were labelled “bio ponds” on the map contained a surprising amount of wildlife: a muskrat, a river otter that scampered up onto the banks and then back into the water repeatedly, ducks, and a heron.

Along with a number of other interesting buildings, we passed a distinctive-looking one with a sign that read Baldwin House, which indeed turned out to have been designed by Arthur Erickson.

There was still snow in much of the park, and the lake was iced over in the middle. Some nonstandard ducks seemed to be finding things to eat near the edge of the ice. A number of people and dogs were walking the same trail as us, but the park was pleasantly uncrowded.

After spending a pleasant couple of hours there, it was truly deflating to return to Metrotown.