Unlikely but interesting alternate future: Circus hippie

You only notice the circus hippies if you hang out a lot in Parc Lafontaine. Correction: if you hang out in a specific corner of Parc la Fontaine.

It starts in the spring, when you see weird looking vans next to the park. They're always there... and they look... homey. With curtains, and guitars and and maybe a cat.

And then you see the guy eating his breakfast in the park. Hey: who needs to live in the country when you can sleep, eat, and practice your tight rope in a manicured pastoral paradise, for free? Hell... you can bet I'm jealous.

It starts slowly on summer afternoons. It can even take hours for the circus hippies to string up their tight rope. One climbs a tree, there's a lot of tossing and looping, pulling taut, testing... And more tree climbing to get on the rope, arms a-kimbo.

People who hang in this corner of the park don't even stop to watch anymore.

Then the other circus hippies appear. Jugglers. Fire stick people. Hula. Tumbling. Stuff I don't even know the word for. At the peak of summer, there could be several clusters of circus hippies cavorting. Others show up and play music, bring kids and dogs.

It's all very civilized. The circus hippies are beautiful. Tan... lithe... All summer long, the vans come and go. Some are just visiting, maybe from other circus hippie parks? And then the weather turns colder, the days shorter, and one by one they start to slip away.

Until just one van remains. Maybe he's the circus hippie park custodian. Maybe a bit of September warmth will bring out two or three more dreadlocked cavorters. And then they're gone, somewhere else beautiful no doubt.