By: Heather Menzies
The Commons trails are temporarily closed because someone lit a fire in the forest, and did a lot of damage. This piece was written days before this happened.
The beautiful trails through the Commons woods are one of the hidden or largely undiscovered treasures of the village core. And they’re suffering for this.
A couple of months ago, a first Commons trail map was created, posted on the Commons website and published in the Sounder.
Building on this, the Commons Trails and Green Spaces (TAGS) team created and posted some directional signs at spots where trail walkers might be confused. But most of these have been vandalized and/or removed.
One sign was pulled up and burned, in a fire built under some Alder trees. The TAGS team salvaged the charred top, attached it to a new post and put that back in place, with a hand-written sign that reads: “Please respect this sign, this trail and these community-shared lands and woods.”
Within a week, this sign too was pulled up and tossed into the bushes.
This is the problem: A network of trails has been developed through the Commons over the nearly 20 years of its existence. But most, especially the forest paths, haven’t been explored and used by most Gabriolans, partly in the absence of a readily accessible trail map. Meanwhile, the Commons woods have become a refuge for the homeless and for many just looking for a place to party and do drugs hidden from the eyes of concerned parents and public-safety figures like the police and fire department. They’ve settled in, hacking down small trees for fires, forging new side trails, ignoring the No Camping, No Fires signs, and even trashing some of these. They seem to have gained a sense of entitlement in this community’s common space, making it seem less hospitable to others.
And this is the danger, particularly now that the fire season is upon us: Without the steadying presence of many Gabriolans regularly modelling respect for the land when walking the Commons woods, any dropped cigarette, any illegal fire, or another propane camp stove under the fir trees pose a risk to the whole community.
This risk can be reduced or even removed if more Gabriolans claim this lovely network of trails through the Commons as their space, and part of how they get some exercise or relax. A walk from an access point on the north side of Huxley Park through to the Labyrinth takes less than 10 minutes. The memorial benches there offer a shady destination during a lunch break for those who work in the village core. Walking groups can add this to their regular roster of routes.
All of these are ways for more Gabriolans to be part of the Commons, to identify with it as theirs, and to take up the shared community responsibility to steward it. For those who want to deepen that commitment, they can join the TAGS team or the trail stewards who patrol the trails three times a week collecting garbage and checking for illegal campers and fires. Send an email to: info@gabriolacommons.ca.
There are also trail map brochures at the Info. Centre, the library and at some businesses in the neighbourhood.
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