The special corridor from Lochside park to Martindale is a protected corridor from the coastal winds and forms an oasis teeming with life, including horses; giant gentle animals, intelligent and magnificent trotting alongside walkers, cyclists, dogs and kids. This walk has offered healing and respite from daily stresses and some major times of sadness for me; beauty and serenity surround you and fill the senses with the smell of damp earth and mosses.

According to some new research, the smells and sights of the forest ground us and affect the health of our bodies and minds, so much so that hospital architects are paying attention to the views outside patient windows – patients heal faster when viewing the outdoors smile emoticon. As we lose agricultural land and pristine forest ecosystems to condos and development we lose our connection to our most primal healer – nature. The sounds of birds and farm animals bring you back to a feeling of childhood wonderment inspiring creativity. It is often that I have come home after this walk to write creative pieces inspired by this very corridor. The ecosystem is rich with composted forest detritus, manure, woodchips, small creeks, mud flat areas, bog and hosts a likely complex mix of bacteria and fungus that benefits the farms, trees, air and wildlife that call it home. The carpet of dirt, gravel and rich dark humus provide soft ground for horses but also joggers who want to protect ther joints. Seniors walk and run along this corridor as well, its soft path easy on the body.

Unfortunately, while I walked at the very edge of the trail going in the right direction, an aggressive cyclist pushed me into the shrubbery as a pedestrian, and I don’t put it down to them being a “cyclist” but a human being that hasn’t evolved past neanderthal awareness, ooga ooga chug chug, breast beating and all that. It gives a bad name to cyclists and one must not let one bad apple lead to generalizations as I am one of them and don’t wish to be painted with broad strokes of assumptions- goal in my view is courteous cycling in view of a trail shared by the community.

Just along to the right of the first part of the path, they have paved a meadow that hosted families of black tailed deer. The saddest vision, a family of deer stood watching from behind the orange plastic fencing as their grazing field disappeared and was replaced by asphalt. Most of the time, there are few cars parked there 5 days a week save for the tournament parking on weekends. I was reminded of Watership Down. What makes Saanich wonderful is that you have urban conveniences amidst nature in balance, now we stand to lose one of the most photographed sections of the trail, it never gets old; as the seasons change and the fog rolls in and out, I’m reminded of the hollows traveled by Icabod Crane, pure magic. Children walk the corridor in awe of animals, nature and people. We need to protect these pristine junctures between urban and rural borders.

I’m in favor of bike-lanes along roadsides but when it comes to protecting the fast disappearing slices of nature, I concede in favour of preservation of what we have not destroyed already in lieu of convenience, speed and less mud on my cycling butt. Hasn’t the ravages of global warming screamed loud enough yet and shown us that we need to change our desire for convenience at the cost of destruction of our environment? As the song goes… Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?

“They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot” – Joni Mithchell