PedalTrout

Several years ago I lived in Ellershouse. One day, while exploring the woods a few kilometers from my home I found a place with big trees, a deep ravine, well-drained forest floor. I knew it needed a mountain bike trail. With no one keen to help and a lack of knowledge on my part the trail remained a dream. Eventually I moved and that was that.

 3 years ago I moved again, back towards that forest. This time I had a willing accomplice and lots of experience. We went to work with a common vision and explored those woods in depth, marking lines, discussing routes, building a place to ride and spending every free minute expanding out blister collection for the sake of having a close-by trail.

 Those woods became a second home of sorts. In the first year, when the leaves started drifting to the ground we had almost 3 km of singletrack –a short distance, but it was technical and challenging, old school trail at its finest. Over the second year we continued to add and modify and groom. 3 years later we had almost 8km of singletrack buried deep within the woods. The trail improved every day we worked on it, hiked it or rode it.

 Grunter (as we called it) also became a sanctuary of sorts for me. Often on rainy days I would leave the bikes at home, take the dogs and slip into the woods to meditate on life, clear the stresses of work and bills and stupid people. There were owls and deer and bears, once I even spotted a flying squirrel. The humongous old growth trees, mossy banks of the ravine and the way that the forest repelled noise was soothing and wonderful. Grunter became my ultimate happy place.

A few weeks ago as Troy and I hiked through Grunter a yellow ribbon waved at us from a tree on the trail. We stopped dead in our tracks to ponder its taunting.  No other ribbons could be seen, perhaps a hunter was marking a spot for a deer stand? Perhaps someone had found the trail and decided to mark it? We crossed our fingers that it meant nothing more and carried on. But then a week later another ribbon appeared, and another.

Yesterday as we hit the downhill section of Grunter I stopped. The sounds of heavy machinery were closer than I was comfortable with. When we finished up the ride and popped through the hidden entrance that separates sanctuary from the rest of the world, shock grabbed my heart and stopped it dead. The old decrepit fireroad that bridged the upper and lower sections of Grunter now sported a fresh new topcoat of shale, complete with a culvert noosed by that same yellow ribbon. People don’t spend money fixing up dirt roads in the middle of nowhere without a reason.

We knew that if not tomorrow, then the next day or the day after that, Grunter would fall victim to the chainsaws and tree rippers that would clear cut this chunk of land that had become my second home.

I guess we should learn something from this experience. Perhaps the lesson is to always obtain permission and determine the end-purpose of a piece of land before building a trail. Perhaps the lesson is that nothing good ever lasts. A part of me feels like 3 years has been wasted, but I know that isn’t true.

Grunter may be falling as we speak, but there are parts of Grunter they can’t cut down. I’ll always have the memory of the exquisite beauty that lay in those woods, the experiences that Troy and I shared while raking or trimming or pondering, the skills that I gained every time I cleaned a new section of tough singletrack. Perhaps someday we’ll go back and resurrect Grunter from the rubble, or perhaps this is our cue to move on and find another sanctuary. Only time will tell.

With no course of action left, no way to stop the carnage, all I can say is Grunter, I’ll miss you terribly. It may sound cliché, but get out there and enjoy what you have because it can vanish in a snap and then it’s too late.

Grow back fast, old friend.