Editor:
I, like many residents of the Sunshine Coast, have been saying to members of Elphinstone Logging Focus that they are doing a good job, glad someone is doing it, keep it up, etc. However, something changed for me this weekend when I took a walk in the area that should be part of the expanded park but instead is slated to be logged.
It was a Father’s Day promise that led me up the B&K Road in torrential rain. A lovely lunch prepared and donated by Laurie and John was provided for all. When we couldn’t put it off any longer, we began the walk to the cutblock via a logging road that the rain had turned into a stream bed.
Twenty minutes later we entered the forest and everything changed. The torrential rain became soft and quiet as the trees sheltered us with their huge umbrella branches. We walked along the thick layers of moss observing the huge Douglas fir trees that had survived the fire in the 1800s but still bore black singe marks as testament to having been there. Our knowledgeable guide (my husband and father of our four children) pointed out the most interesting and unusual plants and phenomena of the forest. For instance, the old snags found in this forest are the tallest around. The dead Douglas firs have shed their bark like clothing and left it in huge heaps at their feet. We saw a variety of saprophytes: Indian pipe just pushing through the moss and pinesap in all its orange glory. We saw the remains of an old shaker’s shack, still well preserved, likely since the early 1900s. We came across some endangered western white pine and an ancient yew tree, all the while having completely forgotten the rain.
When we emerged back on the logging road, the rain assaulted us once more and we wished to be back inside the shelter of the forest.
And so I write this letter as my pledge to help more, to say more, to do more to save these last remaining blocks of old-growth forest so that one day our grandkids will be able to take their dads on a Father’s Day walk.
Charlene Penner, Roberts Creek
