“It’s a sign of progress and a barometer of the growth of our small town,” I whispered to myself today as my nine-year-old daughter walked me through the recently decimated forest next to Brennan Park, making way for a new subdivision.
Many residents of Squamish may not be particularly attached to the stand of trees on the east side of Loggers Lane next to the forestry office, but my daughter Annie and roughly 100-plus other small souls attend Squamish Montessori Elementary in that building. For what they lacked in the form of a formal playground, they enjoyed in the forest as their kingdom of play. I am sure I am not the only parent who found this appealing and perhaps superior to the monkey bars.
So many nights, I heard from Annie about the magnificent forts being built with sticks and mud at recess. The children packed mason jars in their backpacks early in the morning to aid in the play of a forest restaurant they had imagined.
The kids who played there were intimate with the magical world under the canopy of large cedars and the occasional super-large cottonwood. Eagles were observed in those trees in the winter months. The children learned and interacted with varieties of flora and fauna there, from the tree types themselves to lizards, mice, squirrels, deer and snakes.
On our walk this morning, there were tears rolling down my daughter’s face as she tried to find where her fort used to be amid the dead trees, broken branches and tractor ruts. She pointed out the special paths and puddles and hollowed-out old trees that had names, and recalled how traumatic it was to watch from her classroom window the trees being cut the day before spring break.
There are a few memorable moments that stay with you forever from childhood, and somehow, I know this will be one for her and her classmates. As she looked up at me with teary eyes and asked, “Why, oh why did they have to cut down every single tree?”
I could only answer, “I don’t know” and I cried a little too for her pain, and the loss of habitat for her wild forest friends.
We bid you farewell, dear forest, and thank you for the wonderful memories.
Michelle Derrick,
Mom of Annie, 9, and Von, 7
Garibaldi Highlands
