The Adam Project | Lynn Canyon Park, Lynn Valley — the woods the jet came down in

A stolen fighter comes through the trees at night, clips something, and skids into a forest that is far too big for a suburb. That forest is real. The Reed family's neighbourhood was shot in Lynn Valley, North Vancouver, where the streets end and the second-growth simply takes over — Douglas fir and western red cedar closing overhead within a block of somebody's driveway.

The house itself is a private address on East Kings Road, so leave it alone. The public way into the same trees is Lynn Canyon Park, a few minutes uphill.

The park is free, which is the local joke about it — its suspension bridge is half the height of the paid one at Capilano and costs nothing. It has hung across the gorge since 1912, fifty metres above Lynn Creek, and it moves under you more than you expect. Below it the creek has cut down through granite into pools that turn a hard green in summer. Thirty Foot Pool and Twin Falls are short walks from the bridge on trails that root-step down through the ravine.

What the film gets right is the scale. These are not landscaped trees. The stumps you pass, notched with springboard holes, were cut before the First World War, and everything standing now grew back around them. Stand still on the trail after dark and you understand why a location scout looked at this and thought: yes, you could lose a spacecraft in here.

3663 Park Road, North Vancouver. Open daily, no entry fee.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.