Unstable Stairs, Sunlit Paths, and Some Light Trespassing — The Wild Reclamation of BC

There is nothing you can build that nature cannot take away from you.

Not all of the repossession is tragic, though that is mostly what we hear about. A tsunami here, an earthquake there — sinkholes and tornadoes and forest fires. But what if you just... stop loving something? Stop needing it? Stop caring?

That's when it sinks back into the sublunary.

Inspired by the #ThursdayGreen and #SunThursday tags all over the place this morning, I went looking through some of my photos for a good fit; starting here at home seemed perfect. Vancouver is considered to be a metropolitan city; not huge, though still world-class. But go any distance out from the core, and you'll find the wild places. Our focus has shifted to this gleaming jewel on the edge of the water, and we've pulled inwards from the forests and the mountains. We've forgotten all of the bits and pieces we've left behind.

If you hike fifteen or so kilometres down the scenic Indian Arm from the closest trail access point, alongside the Buntzen Lake Reservoir, you'll start finding signs with ominous messages warning of gigantic fines, jail time, eternal damnation; all that good stuff.

And if — like me — you're part weekend warrior and part asshole, you go right by them, because that usually means there's probably some pretty great stuff just ahead.

 

Just ahead might be a slight exaggeration. I say this because it turned out to be seven full flights of dozens and dozens of rotting, rickety steps, descending down the rough-hewn rock to the water uncomfortably far below. Hundreds of chances to crash through the slimy wood and tumble off the cliffs... hundreds of opportunities to thank the good lord you got your tetanus booster. Since I'm here writing, my luck clearly held and my route down was not, in fact, a plummet.

There's something so satisfying in finding these relics way out in the bush, and a fascination with watching nature dismantle them slowly. I like to imagine that if you could speed up the ambient sounds of flora and fauna heard in this crumbling corridor, it would just turn out to be mother earth saying, "GET REKT."

And at the end of the journey, I found the PowerHouse... a post for another day. Would a Wild Reclamation series interest you? Let me know if you want to make the rest of the journey with me — just a short rappel down a rock face, a climb over a fifteen foot gate and some razor wire, and we're there.

All of these photos are my own, taken on my travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them.