On Wednesday morning I woke early, completed my routines, then left the house with a lightly packed shoulder bag, walking south on Clark. Six blocks later I caught the King Ed bus west to Cambie, where I boarded the southbound Olympic Line for YVR -- a $5.00 trip that took forty minutes versus a thirty-five dollar cab ride that took half that.

Air Canada’s Dash-8 flight to Kamloops is estimated at 45 minutes. On this day most of it occurred in the clouds. But we started blue enough: a sharp turn over West Van, where I stared down at the old world roads of the principality's historic subdivisions, her turquoise swimming pools, and above them, in the lap of the mountains, a lake I had never seen before.

The purpose of my journey was the Esther Shalev-Gerz show at the Kamloops Art Gallery, which I was asked to review for Canadian Art. I am familiar with Esther’s work, having included a piece of hers in a group exhibition I curated last September at Gallery 1965, called "Vancouver/Vancouver". The name of the KAG exhibition is "WHITE-OUT: Between Telling and Listening" (2002), and it is up until June 16th.

Yesterday morning I woke early, completed half my routines, then left the house of KAG curator Charo Neville for the passenger seat of her car. Although the drive from Kamloops to Vancouver was as gorgeous as the transition from high desert to maritime forest was palpable, all I could think about were the old world roads of West Vancouver’s historic subdivisions, her turquoise swimming pools, and above them, in the heavens, the exhibition’s co-curator, Annette Hurtig, whose Hornby Island memorial – the one Charo was travelling to – is today.