By Joe Foy

 

Three young highschool students stood before me one day last June waiting patiently for an answer -- and for the moment I was thoroughly stumped!

 

We'd just spent an enjoyable hour together in the Wilderness Committee office -- the three of them taking turns peppering me with questions for a school project about B.C.'s oldgrowth forests and the bad logging practices that are destroying them. Up until now my answers had come easy, but with this latest question, I was momentarily tongue-tied.

 

"What is the most important thing we can do to help save B.C.'s remaining oldgrowth forests," one student had asked. My mind raced. So many choices! Write letters to your local newspaper and to the government. Join an environmental group. Organize your community. All of these actions are important -- but which is the most important. Then I thought back to when I first began to understand ancient forests and the need to preserve them.

 

"Wake up in wilderness!" I said. "Eh?" The students murmured in unison, a puzzled lookon their faces. I explained that the single most important thing they could do was spend some time in a wild place, preferably overnight - after that experience all the other actions you need to take - the letter writing, the organizing -- will cascade forth in a burst of boundless energy.

 

No amount of words, pictures, maps or graphs could ever convey the things you will see, feel, smell and understand by actually spending enough time to backpack into, make camp, go to sleep and wake up in a wild place. And all of these feelings and understandings become more intense when that wild place is under the threat of destruction because of logging or some other proposed industrial development. Every successful B.C. conservation activist woke up in wilderness before beginning their activist efforts. Their combined efforts have resulted in preservation of spectacular ancient forests in B.C. wildlands such as Valhalla Wilderness, Gwaii Haanas, Stein Valley, Skagit Valley, Carmanah Valley, Lower Tsitika Valley, Lower Walbran Valley, Megin Valley, Kitlope Valley, Pinecone-Boise-Burke Wilderness and many other special wild places.

 

Perhaps the late great B.C. wilderness conservationist, Randy Stoltmann said it best in this quote from the closing chapter of his 1993 B.C. wilderness adventure book entitled Written by the Wind.

 

 

So, in answer to the three students from Killarney Highschool, in memory of Randy Stoltmann, in defence of wilderness and in celebration of the summer of 1998 -- here then is my suggestion for a fun and worthwhile way to wake up in wilderness.

 

This summer, join the Wilderness Committee's volunteer trail building team in the Stoltmann Wilderness! The boundaries of the Stoltmann Wilderness come right down to the city limits of Whistler B.C. The is area named after the individual who first proposed its protection -- Randy Stoltmann. The Wilderness Committee and many other local individuals and groups, including members of the Squamish Nation, have been actively working to see this area preserved since 1995. The Stoltmann Wilderness is over 500,000 hectares in size and is being proposed for protection by the Wilderness Committee as Canada's first National Park Reserve in B.C.'s Coast Mountains. International Forest Products (InterFor) is actively building logging roads into the ancient forest valleys of the Stoltmann Wilderness and is logging trees over 1,000 years old. For three years the Wilderness Committee (with the hard work of hundreds of volunteers) has been building a hiking trail up the Elaho Valley, the rainforest heart of the Stoltmann Wilderness in order that people may hike the area, see it for themselves, "wake up in wilderness" and go on to help preserve the area as a National Park Reserve. By joining our team of trail builders you will have an opportunity to be guided into the Stoltmann Wilderness and to camp out there in the middle of the ancient rainforest for at least a week. You will know that by working on the trail you will be helping to preserve this magnificent area. 

 

When you return home, I guarantee you will be energized to work to save this precious local area from InterFor's chainsaws. To join up you must be willing to commit to at least one week, be reasonably fit, have your own tent, sleeping bag, cook stove, backpack and supplies. We will supply the tools, mostly loppers - which are long handled rose pruners. 

 

Give the Wilderness Committee a call at (604) 683-8220. Ask for Tim Murphy, who is coordinating the trail building volunteers. I promise you a week you will never forget -- one you can tell your grandchildren about with pride.

 

P.S. When you call, ask us about our brand new Stoltmann National Park Reserve three-partopinion-cards. These post cards allow you to vote for, or against, the creation of a Stoltmann National Park Reserve. You can then mail in your vote to Prime Minister Chretien and to Premier Clark. What are you waiting for. Time's-a-wasting! We aim to get several hundred thousand cards mailed in right away. Phone today!