This is the part I added to a form letter from the Sierra Club, about a mega-development planned for north of Sooke, on Vancouver Island. You can send your own e-mail here, with only a couple clicks of the mouse. You don’t have to add the part about protecting the mud wasps.

I hiked the Juan de Fuca trail the first summer it opened, at the end of my university years. The trail was… almost ready. Hiking it involved climbing through splits in enormous tree trunks, scaling a few cliffs, and failing to avoid a mud wasp nest. To find the trailhead, we flagged down a passing surfer, who pulled over his VW Van and said, “It’s down a really knarly logging road, dude.” To this day, it’s one of the most memorable hikes in my life. I’ve returned many times, though I now live in Vancouver. Sombrio is one of my favourite camping destinations, and just this spring we took my four-year-old on a “hike” down to Botantical Beach.

And I already have mayors e-mailing me back. We’re like this now. Seriously. Soon, we’ll probably be facebook friends.