Since my article came out last week, I’ve had many responses, most in enthusiastic agreement. The day after I submitted it, the contractor posted an in-depth explanation of what they’re doing there, and why. I read it with interest, but nothing changed my mind, and much sent a chill through my bones. He describes the campground as a “structure” and defends removing large trees to make way for the “underground infrastructure” that needs to go in.
And my head spins. Structure? Infrastructure? It’s a campground. People go camping for a break from technology, for immersion in the natural world. At most, a good campground should offer a place to shower, outhouses, a few taps for water, and a handful of sites with hookups. The old campground had all that. It could have been upgraded without this rip-it-out-and-rebuild-it approach.
Oh, wait. That is so last millennium of me. These are modern times. None of that hippie nonsense, claiming nature is alive, or that trees are ancient beings who communicate through channels we’re only beginning to observe, or that we should preserve what we promised to protect.
Campgrounds have been rebranded. Now, operators are expected to provide a fully serviced structure offering maximum convenience, where visitors can park their mansions-on-wheels close to shopping and the beach. Every site will, I’m sure, be wired, watered, and wifi’d.
Who needs nature? If we break it, we’ll fix it. Right? Nature is just stuff, arranged randomly, and humans are super smart. And anything we can’t figure out, we’ll invent an AI to figure out for us. Problem solved. But can throwing more technology on the problem fix a problem caused by overuse of technology?
In The Overstory by Richard Powers, a character asks, “What do you need to do to make a healthy forest?” The answer: “Nothing.” Less is more when it comes to managing nature. Balance re-establishes itself without intervention. Look at what happened when wolves returned to Yellowstone. Remember how quickly nature restored itself when everything went still during the Covid lockdowns. Blue skies over Beijing. Wild animals roaming urban centres. Nature is waiting for us to wake up.
I was taught “nature is smarter than people.” That was our family religion, since we were otherwise atheists.
For a sharp contrast, look at the Arts Centre. It’s a beautiful example of working with nature with minimal impact. I love that they left so many big trees, especially that one big tree in the parking lot you have to drive around. I love that they’re replanting with indigenous ground cover that doesn’t need watering. I love that they’ve worked every step with Elder Barb White of the Comox First Nation. The first peoples understood nature and respected its ways. I’m not saying we should live as they did. But we could take a page from their book and scale down, slow down, be gentler, show some respect.
I’ll address a few arguments I’ve heard. First: no, it’s not the same as when someone logs their private land. I may object, but I don’t get a say. Nobody bulldozes their entire lot, covers it with gravel, and rebuilds from scratch. That would be silly, and ought to be illegal. But the campground is provincial property. It belongs to us as much as to anyone. In fairness, they ought to defer to the overall island aesthetic and the Islands Trust ‘preserve and protect’ mandate. It’s disrespectful to bulldoze their way in without any clue of context or culture.
In practical terms, many will miss those big shade trees over the parking lot in summer. Hoo boy, that campground is going to be hot and dusty. All that gravel for drainage, combined with removing the old trees, guarantees drier conditions than usual. Why do they need drainage? Oh, it gets muddy in winter? So what? No one uses a campground in winter. With the big old trees, it was nicely shaded and dampish even in summer.
Some say, give it time, it will look beautiful in the end. But that evades the point. How it looks, now or someday, is only a small part of the issue. It’s about the ecological integrity of our island, this limited and fragile ecosystem.
Those big trees were here long before we were. Their roots met underground; they conveyed messages; they sequestered carbon, released oxygen; they monitored their environment, they helped each other stay healthy, they provided habitat for myriad species. New plantings are less resilient, cut off from their histories.
Trees are a community. They cooperate, they communicate with trees farther away. This has been demonstrated again and again. And yet the same people who say “trust the science” go deaf and blind when new science shows that what we’re doing is wrong: unworkable and ultimately destructive.
Those trees were old. No new plantings can replace them, not in our lifetimes. Trees matter, and they’re being removed from the face of the earth at a blinding pace.
We have an opportunity here to do better. We’ve prided ourselves on being a model, in our small way, with our pioneering recycling program, our nature-friendly architecture, our thatched roofs. We have worked hard to do minimal harm, develop sustainable methods, act with care and awareness of consequences. Granted, that has been changing. The Thatch condos, for example, steepened the already-slippery slope.
Are we really going to roll over and embrace the modern monoculture of greed and convenience that’s eating the world? Are we all so tired and dispirited? Or is that just me?
So very tired, y’all.
That’s what I think. What do you think? Email me at phoenixonhornby@gmail.com
