No Smoking in the Forest (156/365/2023)

by The Philosophical Fish

…because we’d like the forest to not end up going up in flames….

No artistic photo today, nothing creative or witty from me….rather…a message.

On my walk into the hatchery today I noticed that the no smoking signs have gone up in the park.

Please don’t smoke in the forest, it’s tinder dry, and please don’t flick your butts out your car window, you may leave a catastrophe in your wake.

Over the past couple of years I’ve stopped and pointed out to a few smokers on the forest trails that smoking is banned in the park during certain dry conditions.

At least one flicked his butt on the ground when I did so.

Twat!

When we moved the the North Shore I loved that we lived close to the forest. When we moved up to where we are now, I was even more thrilled to be closer yet, and just steps to the canyon. I’d see the fires elsewhere in the province and be glad we lived in a rain forest. The months of wet saturated everything and it never really got crispy.

Until more recently.

This was one of the driest months of May on record. The forest is dry, and there are so many small hemlock trees that are dead, and grey and dried out, because of four years of a looper moth infestation. There is so much fuel in that forest right now, and that fuel laden forest is so close to my home….and there are so many stupid and unthinking people who visit that forest who are not from his area and just don’t think that bad things happen within municipal boundaries.

These are the same people that the North Shore Search and Rescue need to pull of trails on a ridiculously regular basis because they seem to think that they will have cell service everywhere…..and that nothing can go wrong if they only had to drive a half hour to get to a trail in the forest.

These are the same people who try to feed the bears and the coyotes.

They’d probably try to pet a skunk if afforded the opportunity.

Now I think about the tree trimmings that I take and don’t leave them in a pile at the back of the yard because I’m afraid someone will flick a butt while driving by.

I look up the side of the mountain and think how awful it would be to see it in flames.

There was a fire along the Sea to Sky a few years back, just outside of Horseshoe Bay. It was a small fire, but a tough slog for the firefighters because the terrain is steep and rocky. There was just one in the past 24 hours outside of Lion’s Bay. Again, small and under control quickly. But it feels like these are harbingers of what is ahead of us.

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