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A few weeks ago I travelled from Victoria 'up island' to Ladysmith. I'd been invited by a friend to spend a weekend with him and his family at their beach house near the small town. My friends were travelling from the mainland by ferry; I had spent the day in Victoria, and we'd agreed to meet in Ladysmith at the new Tim Hortons.

Ladysmith seems to be known to most 'outsiders', if they recognize the name at all, as the birthplace of the well-known Canadian animal-rights activist Pamela Anderson. I suppose I've driven through Ladysmith a dozen times, without ever giving it much thought. Two gas stations, a mall, and a doughnut shop.

I discovered only recently that the town is named after Ladysmith, South Africa, the scene of a famous battle of the Boer war. Okay, I'd never heard of it, but I'm profoundly ignorant about a great many important things. I had been imagining a female blacksmith setting up shop there years ago. Even the original, founded on the banks of the Klip river in South Africa, was named after the wife of some Sir Harry Smith. So much for the romance in local place names.

Curiously, the town of Ladysmith, South Africa, is perhaps known to most 'outsiders', at least those who aren't experts on the Boer war, as the birthplace of the fabulous Ladysmith Black Mambazo. LBM, which most of the world probably first heard on Paul Simon's album 'Graceland', has since built up a well-deserved international following and much acclaim.

The route from Victoria north along the Malahat is a spectacularly beautiful trip. I wasn't in a hurry, and being a passenger on a bus allows one the liberty of taking in the view. The bus seemed to stop in each community along the way to take on or drop off passengers. When we reached Ladysmith (identified by a sign on a shop at the mall where the bus stopped) I jumped off, carrying my little backpack and a couple of plastic grocery bags with contributions to the weekend's meals.

It turns out that there are two bus stops in Ladysmith, and I'd gotten off at the wrong one. Fortunately the last bus up-island gets to Ladysmith several hours before the last ferry from the mainland arrives, so I had some time to spend walking about.

I spent the first hour or so drinking a not-so-good decaf americano at a local cafe, which, it turned out, had free public broadband internet access. I confess I was surprised to find myself plugged in a mere hundred paces from the bus stop in what I had unconsciously taken to be a bit of a backwater.

Since I had time, I decided to walk to the Tim Horton's where I was supposed to meet my friends. I was assured that it wasn't a very great distance, and so I set off. It was starting to get quite dark. The first part of my walk took me along the side of the highway, on a fairly well-travelled footpath. I'd assumed that I'd just follow the highway until I reached the next major intersection or exit, where I'd find the Tim Horton's I was looking for. This is the logic of the highway, of the driver who zips past the little towns at ten or twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, which is already too fast to allow any time to see the places through which one travels. This is the logic by which Ladysmith is two gas stations, a mall and a doughnut shop.

But the path I was on took a turn up a hill, diverging from the highway, and, having time, a still, warm evening, and a little bit of curiousity, I followed. It was strangely difficult to turn my back on the certain route of the highway, noisy, garishly lit, punctuated by litter and washed by whirling gusts of engine exhaust and highway grit with each passing vehicle. Each step I climbed took me deeper into a quiet, dark hillside. I felt I was passing over some threshold, heading into a strange place, where I had no landmarks, no points of reference. And yet, the path led up the hill with a certain intent. It was made for people to walk, or cycle, or rollerblade, from one place to another, so there was no doubt that there was a somewhere that I was on my way to.
And, I reasoned, I could always backtrack if I got too confused. And so, by walking, I entered into the logic of the place that is Ladysmith, BC - a different place than the Ladysmith I've driven through.

After a minute of walking, I was on a quiet, open, small-town street, on either side of which were houses in a variety of characters, sizes, and states of repair, but all seemingly warm and occupied, busy with the activity of homes in the early evening, set back in gardens. I suppose that the street once opened onto the highway, or perhaps was the main thoroughfare, and that the footpath that led me there was the only remaining evidence of that pattern.

I could see stars in the sky above me, and heard birds, small creatures moving about in the hedges, and insect sounds. The rushing roar of the highway was still audible, but muted now, below me and at some distance. A cat watched me from a window, distracted from its survey of its domain by the sudden appearence of a stranger.
Streets curved off, and cross-streets disappeared up hills and around corners.

What surprised me was that although I'd never been to the place I was supposed to be going, had never walked down that particular street, I knew unfailingly where I had to go, roughly what I would see along the way, how long it would take me to get there. I had stumbled upon the logic of place in a town built when people still walked to get to where they had to go. Streets followed the contour of the land, I could see the farms had been and imagine why they were where they were - water, sunlight, wood.

I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to walk through the back streets of a small town at night. I recommend the experience highly. It's a good way to remember that sometimes its the subtle connections between not necessarily obvious things that are the important factors in the end.

All of this is a quiet logic, too easily shouted down by the arrogant and un-subtle force of the highway, the strip mall, the big-box, the franchise, the convenience store. Here we have a story of two Ladysmiths, a Lady Smith, Paul Simon, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Pamela Anderson, a Tim Hortons, stars in a night sky, and a highway. I suppose this is little story about emergence. By its nature, an understanding of emergent pattern can't be a-historical. So, the next time we see Pamela Anderson, will we see the highway, or the farms? When we're next meeting in Ladysmith, will it be the Tim Horton's, or the mom-n-pop diner around the corner?