Community Walks

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There's a wonderful poem by Tung-Shan which includes this stanza:

Enlarge Photo

Bill Robb/This Week

First Avenue in Moncton offers walkers views of lovely trees.

"If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther and farther away.

Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.

It is the same as me, yet I am not it.

Only if you understand it in this way

Will you merge with the way things are."

When you go walking in some of Moncton's older neighbourhoods, far away from where every house either looks just like the others or is so swanky and original that it takes your breath away, you come closer to the truth of the community than any other way.

A walk along First Avenue, for example, off St. George Boulevard, is a way to close in on that feeling. It is a mature neighbourhood, yet safe and in its own way comforting and homey.

There are some of the most beautiful trees I have ever seen there, including an amazing saucer magnolia. New neighbourhoods are trendy and exciting, but walks through older neighbourhoods in our city are time-honoured and speak to the stability of life.

These are places where people live, trying modestly to keep their premises presentable, but not on some wild and mad rush to plant every new bloom or expose themselves to every passing trend.

I'm not sure how this street got its name, but I imagine that the people who live there now could consider because they are first in creating a lovely neighbourhood that is a joy to walk through.

This is also a very convenient place to live, as a quick walk across St. George and down Vaughan Harvey Boulevard takes you down to the new Sobeys store. You could walk, if you felt very spry on any given day, all the way to Centennial Park from here, or at least to the Tim Horton's.

First Avenue is a fun street to explore and then expand the walk in any direction to get a taste for a vibrant part of the city.