never stray far from the water trails. During my tenure as interior ranger, I was privy to the district timber planning operations; whenever there was a proposed logging cut near or within a sensitive area, I would chart out and propose a hiking trail in that same block of land. In the past, if there were no objections or conflicts of use within a proposed cutting area, industry had carte blanche treatment. But propose a hiking trail that would increase tourist flow, and get the scheme into the system files, and you could successfully block the intent by industry to log or build roads in that area.
For me it was a clandestine, albeit dogmatic, approach to solving a problem in the system. I had a night key to the district office and I would forage through master plans and timber allocation maps in the middle of the night. Of the four proposed trails I managed to insert into the planning process, three trails came to fruition. In 1980, I diverted my portage crew to work on the Temagami Island trail system where local logging companies wanted access to one of Ontario’s most magnificent stands of old-growth red and white pine. Once the trail was established, the people came, and they walked through a forest they would not normally have the opportunity to see up close. The existence of the trail created its own lobby group. Although this was a legally sanctioned trail, the means in which it was conceived could be construed as under-handed and coerced.
Deeper into the Temagami wild lands is the Wakimika Triangle — a lush, sweeping forest of gargantuan pine trees, precipitous escarpments, and clear-water lakes. It’s one of North America’s largest remaining stands of old-growth red and white pine. Logging companies have been tripping over each other to get in there and cut it down. A timber access road was pushed north into its sacred domain, a bridge was built over the Obabika River and the Wakimika forest was in sight. While this was happening, our newly founded environmental group, the Temagami Wilderness Society, or TWS (now Earthroots), had been building hiking trails within the forest. This is an illegal activity on Crown property; however, it was sanctioned by the local Ojibwa family, the Misabe’s, whose traditional homeland included the Wakimika forest. At the same time, tree-spikers riddled the big pines at the terminus of the logging road (and beyond) with twelve-inch steel spikes, rendering the pine stands unmarketable. This was an act not carried out by the TWS for obvious reasons; their mandate was to get people walking the newly constructed old-growth trails in order to bolster support for the issue. This was too much, too fast, for the local forestry office to handle, and in Ontario, nobody had yet to be charged with building illegal trails, or fined for spiking trees. It was also too much for the logging companies to deal with: the bridge had been burned out, trees were spiked, and it wasn’t worth taking a chance running trees through the mill band saw, or for sawyers to cut down the trees with the chance of hitting a nail. The media dragged the local Natural Resources administration through the mud, pulverizing them in every major newspaper in Canada. In the end, the Wakimika Triangle, including the section of spiked forest, was indoctrinated into the park system.
As a side note, tree-spiking was first initiated to save forests in the 1800s, and then popularized in Dave Foreman’s (co-founder of Earth First!) book, EcoDefense. According to the Association of Oregon Loggers, “the average ecotage incident costs $60,000 in equipment loss and downtime.” And that’s exactly what tree-spikers aspire to achieve — to make the venture for the company unprofitable. In British Columbia, Meares Island was slotted for clear-cutting, but it was cancelled after extensive and well planned tree-spiking.
Does tree-spiking harm the trees? Not according to University of Maine biologist Jonathan Carter who did extensive studies on the subject: “Unless copper is used, steel and ceramic spikes will not harm trees.”
Many environmentalists feel that they have been put in a position where there is no longer any legal control over the issue and the only remaining options are those outside the law. The question remains: Does tree-spiking work? Some companies will engage workers in a spike removal operation using a metal detector and crowbar. This in itself is costly for the company and it gets to the point where they have to determine if the value of the trees is worth the effort. If I were a tree-spiker, this is what I would do:
1) Make sure the stand of trees is actually slated for logging. Timber allocation maps are usually prepared a year or two in advance of the proposed cut and available to the public. Get somebody not involved in the field work to acquire maps. You don’t want to waste your time spiking a forest that isn’t on the hit list.
2) Plan the operation well in advance of the actual cut. Some companies will position motion detectors and video cameras along roads, bridges, and within the stand itself nearing the time of operations. Plan alternative means of access and avoid roads and peak forest-use seasons.
3) Have someone else purchase spikes, or devise a surrogate project like deck-building, retaining wall, or any reason why you would purchase spikes. Cut off the heads so they can’t be pulled out of the trees or use rebar cut in ten-inch lengths. Ceramic spikes are also becoming popular, as metal detectors can’t locate them.
4) Clean your work area thoroughly. A six-month investigation by state conservation officers and the FBI traced tree-spiking nails to Frank Ambrose, twenty-six, an affiliate of the ELF, through hardware store surveillance tapes. His car was also spotted near the forest at the time of the incident, and police found hammering and metal-cutting tools and cotton gloves with a residue similar to that from the spikes in Ambrose’s apartment.
5) Sink the nails past the bark line so that the protective sap layer covers the spike and is more difficult to extricate. Use tree-climbers (spiked foot harnesses used by arborists and linesmen) or a ladder to pound nails in at higher levels.
6) Always use gloves and leave no trace.
7) Carefully inform the authorities of the exact location of the spiked forest well in advance of any intrusive road building or logging.
Illegal trail building can do harm to the environment if not carefully executed. Mountain bike enthusiasts are notorious for building new trails on private or government lands and are often caught, punished accordingly, and the trails removed. These ventures are usually self-serving with no intent to help save an area from development. Well planned and conceived hiking trails, including water trails or canoe routes, work favourably in garnishing public support. However, a poorly constructed trail can have a rebound effect if improperly established. Portage trails need to be carefully scrutinized for historic or cultural importance and cleared accordingly. New hiking trails must also conform to the doctrines of sustainable trail-building techniques: avoiding fall-line or steep inclines where runoff may occur; avoiding cutting trees more than four inches in diameter; and avoiding sensitive flora and fauna. If an illegal trail conforms to proper trail construction methodology and there is no harm done to the ecological integrity, the local forestry office has less of a case against the perpetrator. Trail construction should be done in the off-season with the employment of hand tools only. On average, two seasoned trailbuilders can construct five hundred to a thousand metres of trail in a day’s work using nothing more than a Pulaski (a single-bit axe with an adze-shaped hoe extending from the back), loppers, and rake. The pay is lousy but the associated benefits are enormous.
River sculpture — the art of misfortune.
PART TWO
JOURNEY’S END:
SIX WAYS TO DIE ON THE TRAIL
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
— Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
There are many more ways to live in the wilderness, comfortably and secure, than there are ways to die. The abruptness of tragedy along the trail compels us to be more wary. Wilderness is not the arena in which you always learn from your mistakes. And mistakes are not patented by the uninitiated or foolish alone; they are often perpetrated by seasoned adventurers who should know better. The section titled Journey’s End purposely extracts all that is good about the adventure;