Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni. The BookWyrm - used books are just $5 or less. The BookWyrm, on the corner of Redford and Anderson, opens seven days a week from 10 to 5, building your personal library for less. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online.
The Ballad of Peter & Gracie: Peter and his dog raced here and there, through fields so wide, with dreams in their pockets and stars as their guide. Every day's an adventure under the open sky. In their world of stories, time just flies by.
Peter McCully: Peter had a new camera. It wasn't fancy, just small and square, and covered in scuffed blue plastic, with a little round lens on the front and a slot on the side where the pictures came out. Grandpa had found it in a drawer and given it to Peter that morning. "This old thing took pictures of your mom when she was your age," Grandpa said, looping the strap over Peter's head.
"The pack inside only has 10 pictures left, so choose them carefully. No snapping the same thing over and over again." "10?" Peter said, turning the camera over in his hands. "That's not very many." "It's plenty," Grandpa said, "if you pick the right moments. And watch, it does something pretty neat." He pointed the camera at Peter and pressed the button.
There was a bright flash and a soft whir, and a little square of grey plastic slid right out of the slot. Grandpa plucked it out and waved it gently through the air. Peter watched, and sure enough, colours began to bloom across the grey square, slowly, like a puddle filling up after rain, until his own grinning face appeared right there in his hand.
"Whoa," Peter said. "It just makes the picture right there." "Right there," Grandpa said. "No waiting weeks for it. But now you’ve got nine pictures left, so choose wisely."
Gracie knew the word Coombs the way she knew the words walk and treat. The second she heard it, her ears popped up and her tail began to thump against the floor. "That's right, Gracie," Peter laughed, scratching behind her ears. "Goats on a roof." The drive down the road to Goats on the Roof didn't take long, and soon Peter could see the little country market up ahead, with its wooden buildings and wide green roof.
And right there on top of the roof, munching away at the soft grass like it was the most normal thing in the world, were the goats. "Gracie, look," Peter said, already lifting his camera. "Real goats on a real roof." He peered through the little window at the top of the camera, trying to get the goats lined up just right.
One goat wandered left. Another lay down. A third turned around so all Peter could see was its fluffy backside. "Hold still," Peter muttered, waiting for the perfect moment. "Peter," called Mom from a few steps away, "Aren't you actually going to look at them? With your own eyes, I mean, not just through that little window?"
"In a second," Peter said. "I just need this one shot." He pressed the button, flash, whir, and the little square slid into his hand. Peter held still, staring down at it, waiting for the colours to bloom. He was so busy watching his own picture appear that he never noticed the real goats above him wandering off one by one.
"Eight left," he said to Gracie, tucking the finished photo carefully into his pocket, and Gracie wagged her tail as if she understood exactly what that meant. They wandered through the market, past baskets of apples, shelves of old-fashioned candy, past a lady selling kettle corn in big paper bags. The smell of warm popcorn drifted through the air, sweet and buttery.
"Oh, hold still, Gracie," Peter said, lifting the camera. "I want a picture of you smelling the popcorn." Gracie, of course, did not hold back. She stuck her whole nose into an open popcorn bag sitting on a bench, and by the time Peter had the camera lined up, all he could see through the little window was a fluffy white dog wearing a paper bag like a hat.
Kernels scattered everywhere, while the kettle corn lady laughed so hard she had to hold her stomach. Peter lowered the camera, giggling. "Aw, I missed it," he said. "That would have been the best picture ever." "Maybe," said Mom, still smiling at Gracie, who was now shaking the bag off her nose. "But you got to see it.
That counts too, you know." Peter wasn't sure it counted the same way. A picture was something you could hold forever. A moment you only saw with your own eyes felt like it slipped away the second it happened. Still, he managed to snap a picture of Gracie sitting proudly beside the popcorn crumbs, her ears up, looking very pleased with herself.
Flash, whir, slide. Peter watched the little square waiting for the colour, and it took so long that by the time he looked up, Gracie had already wandered off towards a bin of shiny red apples. Seven pictures left. Next, they went to Butterfly World right next door, where the air inside was warm and soft and smelled like flowers.
Butterflies drifted everywhere, orange and blue and yellow, landing on leaves and flowers, and every so often on a person who stood very still. Peter lifted his camera the moment they walked in, determined to catch the perfect butterfly picture. He followed one bright blue butterfly, but it never landed anywhere long enough.
He followed an orange one after that, and then a yellow one, always a second too slow, his finger hovering over the button. "You're missing them," Gracie seemed to say, tilting her head, though of course she only barked. "I know," Peter sighed, lowering the camera. "I just want to catch one good picture." And then without any warning at all, a butterfly the colour of a summer sunset landed right on the tip of Peter's nose.
Peter froze. He didn't dare move, not even to lift the camera, because he knew if he moved even a little bit or pressed the button and set off the flash, the butterfly would fly away. So instead, he just stood there, cross-eyed, watching the delicate orange wings open and close, open and close, so close he could almost feel the tiny breeze they made.
It was the best moment of the whole day so far, and Peter didn't get a single picture of it. When the butterfly finally fluttered off, Peter let out a long breath. "Did you see that?" He asked Mom, grinning so wide his face nearly hurt. "It landed right on my nose." "I saw," Mom said. "I don't think a photo could have shown how happy you looked anyway."
Peter thought about that as they walked towards the old wooden shops that looked like a tiny frontier town, with false fronts and creaky porches. He had seven of his ten pictures left, and the day wasn't even half over. He decided to try something new. Instead of lifting the camera for every single thing, he made himself wait.
He watched Gracie sniff along the wooden boardwalk, and a little girl feeding a goat through a fence, laughing every time its floppy ears flapped, and clouds drift slowly over the green roof where the goat still grazed, lazy and unbothered. Inside one of the wooden shops, Peter found a shelf of tin toys and rock candy in every colour of the rainbow.
He almost lifted the camera, then stopped himself. "That's not really a moment," he said out loud. "That's just a shelf." Instead, he picked out a stick of blue rock candy to share with Mom and tucked the camera back against his chest. Only when something felt truly special did Peter lift the camera again. A goat poked its head over the fence to sniff Gracie's ear, their noses almost touching.
Flash, whir, slide. This time, Peter tucked the blank square into his pocket without looking and kept watching the goat and Gracie instead, right up until the goat gave a friendly little sneeze that made Gracie leap backwards in surprise. Only later did he pull out the photo to find the colours had already bloomed on their own, the picture waiting patiently for him the whole time.
Six left. "You didn't even watch it happen," Grandpa said. "How was that?" "Better," Peter admitted. "I got the picture, and I saw the goat sneeze." By the time they reached the ice cream stand, Peter had learned to slow down. He ordered a scoop of maple walnut, and instead of rushing to photograph it before it melted, he let himself taste it first.
The ice cream was cold and sweet, and Gracie watched every bite with such hopeful eyes that Peter finally gave her a small lick off his finger. Only after that, laughing at the way Gracie's whole face lit up, did Peter reach for his camera. Flash, whir, slide. Five left. "That's a good one," Grandpa said, peeking over Peter's shoulder as the colours bloomed into a picture of Gracie's ice cream-covered nose.
"You waited for it." "I did," Peter said, a little surprised at himself. "It felt better that way, like I actually got to have the ice cream instead of just trying to catch a picture of it." Grandpa smiled, the same smile he had had that morning handing over the old camera. "That's the funny thing about pictures," he said.
"The best ones don't come from chasing every second or from staring at the little square waiting for it to finish. They come from noticing which seconds matter most and letting the rest of them just happen." Peter thought about that as they wandered through the rest of the market. He still took pictures now and then, five left slowly becoming three, but between each flash and whir, he let himself simply be there.
He raced Gracie down a grassy path and splashed his hand in the little fountain out front. He watched without any camera at all as a goat on the roof stretched its neck down to nibble a leaf from a tree beside the building, while another goat tried to steal the same leaf, the two of them tugging back and forth.
That was the moment Peter almost missed entirely because he was laughing too hard to remember the camera hanging around his neck. By the time he lifted it, both goats had already scampered off, satisfied with their tug-of-war. "Rats," Peter said, lowering the camera. "Missed it again." But this time it didn't bother him quite as much.
He still had the memory of it, clear and warm and funny, even without a picture to prove it happened. As the sun began to dip lower and the shadows grew long across the market, Peter had exactly one picture left. Just one. "What are you going to take a picture of?" Grandpa asked. "You've still got the whole rest of the afternoon to think about it."
Peter thought about the goats on the roof, the butterfly on his nose, the popcorn bag on Gracie's head, and the tug-of-war over the leaf. All of them were wonderful. None of them had a photo to remember them by. Then he looked down and found exactly what he wanted. Gracie was lying in the grass beside the market, worn out from a whole day of adventures, her chin resting on her paws, watching the goats on the roof with sleepy eyes.
The late afternoon sun turned her white fur golden, and every so often, her tail gave a lazy thump against the ground as if even being tired, she was still happy. Peter knelt down beside her and lifted the camera one last time. He didn't rush. He waited until Gracie's tail thumped again, until the light looked just right, until the moment felt exactly like the whole day had felt.
Flash. Whir. The last little square slid out into his hand. This time, Peter didn't stare at it right away. He set it down gently in the grass and instead scratched behind Gracie's ears and watched the real goats on the real roof for one more minute, just because he could. Only then did he turn the picture over.
"Perfect," Peter whispered, and Gracie thumped her tail once more as if she had agreed. Back at the picnic blanket, Peter spread all 10 pictures across the grass for everyone to see. Some were blurry. Some had goats turned the wrong way, or a half a butterfly wing, or nothing but a blur of white fur and popcorn.
He laughed at every single one. But it was the very last picture, the one of Gracie resting in the grass with the goats on the roof behind her, that he decided to keep in a frame beside his bed. Every night before he fell asleep, he looked at that photo and remembered the whole day at Coombs. Not just the picture itself, but the popcorn, the butterfly, the ice cream, and every moment in between that no camera had ever managed to catch.
"You know," Peter told Gracie, tapping the picture frame, "I think Grandpa was right. The best part of the day wasn't really any one picture." Gracie tilted her head, waiting. "It was just being there," Peter said, "with you." Gracie thumped her tail against the floor, and that, Peter decided, was one more perfect moment. He didn't need a camera to remember it all.
The Ballad of Peter & Gracie: Peter and Gracie, the finest of friends, with tales of wonder that never end. In the pages of books or stars above, they find their magic in laughter and love.
Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni. The BookWyrm - used books are just $5 or less. The BookWyrm, on the corner of Redford and Anderson, opens seven days a week from 10 to 5, building your personal library for less. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online.
