The Illuminares Lantern Festival was a magical experience!
I’m an Illuminares newbie no more! I have no idea why I’ve missed the past years of this remarkable display of light, community, and spirit but I won’t be missing it in the future.
A snapshot of some of the intricate homemade lanterns.
Photo ‘borrowed’ from PublicDreams.com
What a magical experience the Lantern Festival was… it was a surreal evening of homemade lanterns glittering everywhere I looked, musicians’ music floating into the warm summer breeze, fire dancers astonishing all with their remarkable displays, and stiltwalkers towering over the onlookers at East Vancouver’s Trout Lake Park.
Jeremy and I headed to the park shortly before 8:30, after enjoying a pre-Illuminares potluck right across the street at Jenn & Michel’s place (Thanks for having us, guys!). I found myself quickly overwhelmed by the amount of people that had already arrived — and it wasn’t even close to dark yet… All told, we guessed there must have been about 50,000 people in the park that night.
Jer suggested after we staked out Tammy’s candle booth and bugged her for a while, that we walk around the lake and look over the displays before it started to get really dark. What beauty and pure joy the event seemed to extract from all that came to see and experience — Everyone seemed to glow. I could almost reach out and touch the jubilation that seemed to eminate from almost everyone around me… And no, I don’t think it was due to the pot smoking that seemed to be a predominant odor that wafted past me every so often.
Before finishing our first loop around the lake, we laid down on the grass and talked as we looked up at the evening sky. It was just starting to get dark, and when we got up again, I was astonished at how the scene, which had been pretty and special before, turn into magical and glittery atmosphere with little points of light shining out of the darkness everywhere we looked. Wow.
Finally, after walking around the lake one last time, Jer and I agreed to get on our way at about 11pm — We were both exhausted from lack of sleep due to the warm-up noise from the Indy race track that morning near his place. We departed the park on his motorcycle (thank goodness for motorcycles, and the ease of parking it afforded us) and made our way back to my place where we quickly crashed — We both had to be up early Sunday morning.
Once again, I have to say, we are so lucky to live in Vancouver. I can’t repeat this enough — I love this place.
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Hey, I was there for the first time also. It was pretty amazing wasn’t it? Funny that I’ve been in the city for so many years and only now finding events like that.
i lost my illuminares virginity that night too!
no surprise that i didn’t see you there considering the amount of people!
A very cool photo! Ya, I avoid that part of town like the plage….. With Indy and Folk-Fest going on all over the place, trafic was nuts… I think rowing down the Fraser would of being faster… *hint, hint* I took HWY1 to North Van and found myself stuck in a line-up to 45min before I could make the exit….
Hey! For next year, why dont we all buy a tonne of beer and spend two days making a huge freakin gawd damned amorphous slug shaped lantern… and then fill it with hydrogren for lift… before lighting the candles???? Whadahya say?!?!
damnit i knew i forgot to do *something* this weekend!
A Ninja is not a motorcycle. It’s panties on 2 wheels.
Whoops… forgot the
Wow – I can’t believe how great those lanterns are! Beautiful shot!
[[place sheepish look here]] I just realized that I didn’t give credit to the person that took that picture — It’s there now. I stole it from the publicdreams.com site. …I agree, it’s a great shot!
Hey Mel, thanks for stopping by! I checked out your site, and it looks like we were in London a week apart from each other this year! That’s funny!
Ed — Ya, whatever, you ex-Yamaha crotchrocket lunatic.
Vern — Woo! What a plan Stan! Let’s blow up the apartment trying at least??
Nelly… Darn! That’s no good!
Shnewt & Col — We should have organized something and all lost our ‘virginity’ together! Oh well. Next time!
Thomasso — Hey, it’s not that bad if you take the skytrain?
It was a fun night but next time I want to be making the smoke instead of smelling it…
Eeeewwwwww, your talking about BC Transit now, arn’t ya…. :O Can I tell you stories….. lets see, back in 1982……….
That picture looks really “un-earthly”. I suspect it is best seen “live” though. I’m not aware that we get anything like that over here. Pity.
So the “rowing” thing. I can see this is going to be a long comment. Feel free to edit or delete it. It is “off-topic” for this post. Anyway I have been here a few times before, usually linking from Tom’s site after you’ve made a comment there. I cannot remember seeing anything about rowing until a couple of days or so ago when you’d missed it cuz you were working late and I thought “Rowing – where the hell did that come from?” As you say, you are lucky to be living in Vancouver cuz if you lived here the only thing you’d have to row on are the cannals and I just don’t think you’d want to do that. I would think that if you were in or around the London area you’d have no problem finding a nice waterway to flex your muscles on but not here. It must be a “where you live” thing. You live in Vancouver and I don’t.
Ahem… A Ninja isn’t even in the same league as an FZ600R FYI! Kawasaki.. pthhtpptt! Remember those horrible HD wannabe bikes on CHiPS? Yeah. Kawasaki. Sorry, but it’s a matter of principle. I’d own another Yammy in a microsecond. Oh and the HD’s aren’t called Milwaukee Vibrators for nothin’. But hey, different strokes for different folks. I miss my bike… I wanna ride…