As our snow slowly melts under the atmospheric inversion, fog has been building up daily. Weather forecasters promise us daily that it will be warmer and sunny, and they are, without fail, mistaken. I took a long walk this afternoon on one of the paths into Vancouver's University Endowment Lands, known since 1988 as the Pacific Spirit Regional Park. Originally this land was set aside for the university so that whenever it needed money, it could develop the land and sell lots, but the depression and war intervened. Twenty years ago, the province declared that most of the remaining land would be a park, which is wonderful.
The trees are second-growth, meaning that the entire area had been harvested earlier, likely sometime around the 1920s and early 30s. Since then, there has been no cutting and the area is slowly reverting to forest. A society has been formed to eradicate non-native plants from the forest (people used to dump cuttings, unwanted soil, etc.) Thousands of people stroll through the forest's paths. We are lucky to live but two houses away.
