Even time-sculpted sands scarred by the selfish

Opinion

An escape from the harshness of the world to a homestead near Cypress River two weeks ago, to a night in a loose-gapped pop-up geriatric tent trailer with all of the outside seeping in liquid through seams, the sounds of the night birds peeping and whistling on the wind, a thunderstorm passing and a pack of coyotes passing, too, yodelling and yipping as they travelled down the road.

A few minutes of magic, that short coyote transit, canine conversation distinct and so carefully shaped while half-sleeping that you could hold it in your hand like a ball.

It was after lawn chairs and fire tankers rolling down the road to nearby wildland fires, after hot dogs and chips and potato salad and children finally asleep, after sloughing off worries and tamping down fears, sliding into that period where you talk among friends and family without even having to talk.

Best of times.

We were heading for the Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park the next day. Up in the bright morning, cautioned at the park gate about the heat rising on the sands, the way the dunes can make it as much as 10 C hotter.

Out and up the trail edged by fading Prairie crocuses and yellow stoneflowers, past spruces and rogue chipmunks, trying to outrun the voices of other hikers.

Looking for hard alone, looking forward to the dunes.

There is a repetition of signs: “Stay on the trail,” “Fragile ecosystem” — and yet, at any point where it looked like there might be a view, there was an unregulated path pounded down through the undergrowth to allow off-path hikers to see a glimpse of the winding Assiniboine far down in the valley, or a sloped and shallow dell that might just hold a view of the river — but didn’t — but might if you and everyone after you tromped your way in.

Later, up the grey, weathered wooden stairs to a lookoff over the dunes, interpretive signs to tell you what you could see — one defaced with heavy Sharpie graffiti — and every single surface of the greyed wood railing was carved with initials and names, the important and necessary proofs of who loved whom at one precise moment in time, and who was exactly right here, at this railing, on May 15, 2019, holding that essential point-down penknife.

But at least you could look up and away to the sweeps and hollows of the sand lands, the way they look accidentally peaked and valleyed, yet are precise creations of climate, physics and geometry. Sand, its peaks and slopes set by the unremitting values of the angle of repose of the size and shape of each of its grains.

The sand is washed clean — a new slate — when there’s a rain, the dimples of raindrops like small shallow dimples or cups, filling in between each other with the randomness of their fall, until they overlap and erase things like footsteps.

And a thunderstorm had passed through the night before, the very one we heard in the tent trailer, grumbling and flashing along the horizon, but its rainfall had not been heavy enough to reach down into the deepest footprints in soft sand. The dimples had dimpled, but had failed at success erasure.

So out on the dunes, on the rail, you could still see a spiderweb of footsteps heading away from the trail in almost any haphazard direction, ample evidence that just as many people ignore the requirement to stay on the trail as actually do take the path.

But worse was ahead.

Deep in the trail, right where you turn back, once you’re confused enough by the straggle of other unofficial trails, you come to a resting spot, a few benches under a sloped roof, and a pair of cables run up a dune face, the cables passing through and attached to logs to make a set of soft stairs on the sand incline. A dune ladder, the least damaging path up the face.

There was a family of five at the top of the dune, 30 or 40 feet up, the parents looking away over the vista of the sands with their smartphones, taking pictures, while the kids, maybe 12 to 15, whooped and hollered and climbed the ladder before running across the dune top and then throwing themselves down the face of the dune in long looping sliding strides, rivers of sand rushing away in front of them, breaking up the duneface before heading back to the ladder, picking a fresh untrammelled section of dune, and then doing it all over again.

Deep gashes left behind won’t fill for ages, fragile plant life overrun by individual exuberance. And not a word was said, no remonstration. Half an hour’s personal fun that won’t be undone for the dunes for months, and for the plants, perhaps ever.

Lighten up, old man: it’s just kids, being kids. We’re out here to have fun.

There is garbage in the woods, pop cans and water bottles, and bagged poop-and-scoop doggie bags hanging from occasional branches a short fling away from the path.

Someday, maybe the prevailing ethos in our world will not be “me and mine’s fun first before everything.” Maybe it will be “we all share a responsibility.”

Sadly, that time is not now.

The sands may still have spirit.

Me? Not so much