PERFECT DAY ON A NEW LOOP:
THE BEAVER SPRINGS WETLANDS

A beautiful sunny, afternoon hike around our terrific new loop trail - The Beaver Springs Wetland, just before the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the Sydenham Bruce Trail Club held at the United Church in Annan on Sunday, 25 October. Numerous awards and recognitions for outstanding contributions to the club were presented. A great pot-luck dinner was enjoyed by all. Over the course of the afternoon, numerous comments were made about the large number of people in attendance - the true measure of a healthy club.

Message from Our New Prseident:
CONTINUING TO WORK AS A TEAM

First of all, thanks to everyone for the vote ofconfidence in allowing me to serve this Club as president. It feels a bit daunting to become the president of something, but I also feel positive and confident about it, because I think we have a goodteam here in the Sydenham Club – we have strongmembers on our Executive, hard workers who love the Bruce Trail, and are passionate about helping to achieve our mission.

None more so than Cliff Keeling. Cliff has been the president for several years, and has been involved with the Sydenham Club and the Bruce Trail for many years. I think Cliff must be one of the earliest members of the Bruce Trail – his membership card has the lowest number I’ve ever seen.

Cliff has done most of the jobs in this club at one time or another – trail maintenance, trail building, land stewarding, and especially Landowner Relations. Cliff has helped negotiate and smooth the way for many of the handshake agreements we have today, for having our trail on other people’s land. Although Cliff ishappy to let go of the president’s job, I believe he will remain active on ourLandowner Relations Committee, and as past president – I hope he willcontinue to help guide all of us, and me personally in my new role as yourpresident.

So, I look forward to continuing to work with the rest of our executive, to help achieve the mission of the Bruce Trail Conservancy. I think we’ll do great, if we continue to work together as a team. I think that’s very important – that we all pull the wagon in the same direction. If we pull in different directions, the wagon doesn’t move anywhere! Sometimes we have different opinions or ideas about issues, or what to do, or how to do it. And that’s OK – because different ideas are healthy for an organization – that’s how we learn,and how we grow. The collective ideas of everybody working together, is what leads to the best answer at the end of the day. Because deep down, everybody associated with the Bruce Trail Conservancy has the same objectives and goals, and we’re all trying to accomplish that same mission.

The other thing about teamwork is, we have some gaps on our team. Our executive has vacant positions for public relations & publicity, volunteer coordinator, and vice-president. If you’d like to help the Club in some way,perhaps one of these positions would be of interest? We’re also looking for help with organizing some of our club events – could you be a social convenor, or events coordinator? Or if you’d just like to watch what we do, and learn a bit more about how our club operates, without making any commitments, come on out to one of our executive meetings. We’re a good bunch, you might enjoy getting to know us a little better.

Together, we can do good things for the Bruce Trail! Thank you!

... Frank Schoenhoeffer

WINTER YURT CAMPING

Twenty four Sydenham Bruce Trail Club members will be winter Yurt camping a MacGregor Provincial Park near Port Elgin on January 22 and 23. Visit us! A day pas will allow you to ski on trackset trails, skate on a beautiful outdoor rink that`s lit up a night and snowshoe on the park trails. Harriet Nixon, 519-534-0426

Trail Director’s Report

REMINISCING BY A WARM FIRE

As I write this note I can hear the soft patter of the rain against our windows. Actually it has been raining for daysand for weeks now I haven’t ventured very far into the woods. I am anxious to get back and I am not alone. In the mall I meet trail workers who are still anxious to getout in the woods one more time this year; volunteers phone me and ask to be added to my call list and e-mails from more volunteers ask the same thing. When can we get back in the woods? When is it going to stop raining?

Even though it is too wet to work in the forest,Sydenham’s rainy season is a great time to sit by a fireand to look back on and remember our year. What a year it was!

• I remember last April and the Lindenwood property –“Kick the Tires Event.” What a smashing success that was. Our club’s volunteers in one week built 4 kilometres of new trail to showcase the property and then in one day with a “KTT Event” helped to raise over $17,000 to finalize the purchase of this beautiful property.
• I remember the work parties in May when our volunteers built two excellent boardwalks first having to a place to transport them over a kilometre through fields in behind Lindenwood.
• I remember in June and our volunteers working for days up on the Irish Block Road as we slowly worked our way through what is now called “Hawthorn Alley.” This was the meanest stretch of trail cutting we have ever done. It is the first time I carried a bottle of hydrogen peroxide with me in my backpack to apply to the many scratches we all experienced. Hikers walking that stretch have commented to me that that must have been a nightmare cutting open that section. It was! On this property we have Mr. and Mrs. Rist to thank for their kind permission to allow us to place trail on their land.
• I remember in August the Beaver Springs Loop Trail work parties. I remember volunteers 15 years old to 80 years young working side by side as we built a trail on this scenic and beautiful wetland. Even the local beavers worked to provide us with a path across the marsh.
• I remember in September as volunteers worked at opening a new reroute around the busy 6/10 highway near the Centennial Tower. We have Percy Warrilow to thankfor his generous offer to allow us to use his property.Thanks to him and our volunteers we now have a first rate reroute.
• Finally in October I remember the first work parties to venture onto our newest and perhaps our most excitingproperty ever – The Palisades. This property is located atthe end of 7 Avenue East in Owen Sound. “Chainsaw Frank” and his crew worked their magic for four days and then a large work party assisted by volunteers from theformer Edwards of Canada plant started to place trail on the first kilometre of what will eventually become a new 3 km reroute. What a work party that was – for four hours these new recruits and our seasoned veterans worked on a high, steep and extremely rough talus slope. They filled in pot holes that were in some places 4 feet deep. They made steps, they side logged steep slopes and they cut their way through the heavy underbrush. The trail is not finished yet. We still have a long way to go and more work parties will be needed to complete this new route. The result is, hopefully by next spring, we will have another exciting trail waiting for you to discover.

If you think about it – this is what the Bruce Trail is – a place to hike, to appreciate nature and to discover what wonders the escarpment has to offer.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end this note by thanking all of Sydenham’s volunteers, Trail Captains and Trail workers alike, who helped make this year such a great success.

... Ron Savage, Sydenham Bruce Trail Director

Landowner Relations and Land Securement Report

SUMMARY OF LAST YEAR’S EVENTS

For those who missed our AGM at the end of October, this is a summary of the past year’sachievements in Land Securement.

At the 2008 Sydenham BTC AGM, I reported that the previous fiscal year had been a record-breaking year, since the BTC had secured 15 properties, more than ever before in a single year. Well at this year’s AGM, I was very happy to report that we have beat that record – yes, in the 2008/09 fiscal year, the Bruce Trail Conservancy secured 17 properties, for a totalpurchase price of $1.24 million. (Most of that money was donations,as well as some Greenlands Program funding, from the Ontario Ministryof Natural Resources.) These properties allowed us to secure 7.3 km of Bruce Trail Optimum Route and conserve 547 acres of Escarpment land.

I’d like to highlight that seven of those properties were donated by the landowners. We are very grateful to these landowners for generouslycontributing to our mission to protect the ecological integrity of the Niagara Escarpment.

Five of the properties securedwere here in the Sydenham Club. That is the lion’s share of properties – five out of 17, here in our Club.

We hiked across one of these properties at the AGM, the BeaverSprings Wetland. For anyone who hasn’t seen that yet, I encourage you to check it out – it’s a great little surprise, a lovely little wetland, in among all our rural agricultural land. Of course that exists mainly becauseof the beavers, and our Trail Director has made good use of the beaver dams, by building the side trail right on top of them, so we can get rightup close and personal with that wetland.

We also secured the Ferndell property last year, which is aboutone concession west of the Beaver Springs area, plus the Pines property,at the east edge of Owen Sound. We also were donated an easement, in Woodford, just a tiny bit of trail, but a very vital link to connect downtown Woodford with the main trail heading east from there. So a big thank you to Mr. Rick Dunlopfor donating that easement to us.

Our biggest acquisition last year, of course, was the Lindenwood property. This has been described in recent Hiker articles, but just toreiterate, acquisition of this property has secured 176 acres of Escarpment land. It enabled us to make a significant improvement to the maintrail, and add a complete new side trail with which to explore that whole property.

These achievements were made possible by hard work and excellentteamwork, within our own Club (especially Ron Savage and Cliff Keeling working with our local landowners) and with the staff at Rasberry House, who are organizing the marketing and fundraisingcampaigns, and working successfully with many partner organizations, toprocure these properties.

We have never achieved so much in a single year. Although ourdonations are slowing down with the current economic “tough times,” hopefully our successes will continue next year and beyond. In fact, in the current fiscal year, which started in July, we have alreadysecured two more properties here inSydenham Club – they’re adjacent to each other – we’re calling them the Palisades – they’re on the east sideof Owen Sound, looking down over Harrison Park. Look for more details in the current BTC magazine.

And, at the present time, theSydenham Club has six more properties being actively pursued bythe BTC. These are still at the confidential negotiation stage, but ifwe secure them, they will result in more acres of precious Escarpment land protected forever, and more improvements to our main trail.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will also say, we’realways on the lookout for more properties along our Optimum Route, where we can get a handshake deal with the landowner to improve our main trail, as well as more properties which can be secured and conserved.

So if any of you readers just happen to live on or near the trail, oryou know somebody who does, oryou know a landowner who might let us put the trail on their property, oryou’d like to learn a bit more about the possibilities of either donating some land, in exchange for a taxreceipt, or maybe severing a piece, or selling, or including something in your will – there are lots of options and possibilities for you, or yourneighbours, to help with our mission of conserving the Escarpment, please come and talk to us on the Landowner Relations Committee anytime! Thank you!

... Frank Schoenhoeffer

TREES OF THE TRAIL

Photography by Bob Hope

How observant are you on the trail? Here are trees that you pass by on the Sydenham Trail and this is a test to see how many are familiar to you!

Click here for answers.

Sydenham Bruce Trail Executive

Back row, from left: Jim Coburn, E-Notes; Bob Hope, Land Stewardship; Sheila Gunby, Newsletter Editor; Doug Cumming, BTC Representative; Ron Savage, Trail Director. Front row, from left: Bruce Price, Treasurer; Frank Schoenhoeffer, President; Cliff Keeling, Past-president; and Debbie Durkee, Secretary. Absent: Joseph Nanni, Marketing Director; Pat Savage, Archivist; Del Bonham, Director at Large; Marj Odell, Hike Coordinator; Bob Watson, Membership; Ross McLean, Advisor to the Board

RESCUED FROM THE DUST

In May of 1996 Jim Pappas donated an easement across his property just to the east of the Massie Forest. Jim attached the plaque recognizing his donation to a large boulder on the easement but the winter ice that year damaged and quickly removed it. Since then it has rested and gathered dust in his garage. This summer Krueger Custom Steel of Owen Sound generously offered to repair the plaque and donate a post to hold it. Ron Savage and Jim Pappas reinstalled the plaque along side the easement. On behalf of all hikers of the Bruce Trail we offer Jim our thanks for his generous donation of an easement across his beautiful property - thirteen years ago.

THE ART OF STILE BUILDING

Cliff Keeling demonstrates stile building to two of our younger volunteers: Duncan Clendinning (left) and Roger O’Dell (centre).

EACH WALK IS DIFFERENT FROM THE DAY BEFORE . . . .

Ah … the ritual of suiting up for theweather, temperature, and on myfavourite trail … mud, or at least lots of leafy, wet pools and puddles. Grey trees with bare branches and the crunch of leaves underfoot on the forest floor confirms this is November. I love observing how nature around me changes fromseason to season. It’s precisely these miracles that reassure and comfort me through my own transitions.

Getting out there, alone or withfriends, revives me and clarifies, cleanses and renews my spirit. As a young irl, my brother shared with methe Books of Narnia, by C.S.Lewis. In reading these I was introduced tothe enchantment, mystery, realism and truths to be found in the natural world.

Thirty years ago the woods,rocks and water up at our familycottage were becoming too well known. So, at 16, my girlfriend and I braved the Bruce Trail from Blue Mountain north. We spent weeks planning and collecting our gear andsupplies and studying the Bruce Trail guide. A beautiful trip! Butalas, it was not perfect. We got lost.About day two we ditched some of the ‘absolutely necessary gear tolighten our loads. My friend caught poison ivy. I called my brother for more money. And one day we hitched a ride for a few kilometres. It was though, an amazing adventure and a very happy time of facing our fears and growing up.

Today, hiking the trail for me is a great opportunity to spend time with my sons, to catch up with old friends or to meet new ones. But I also come to the trail for renewal and sometimes just to escape. The natural beauty always inspires me tothink beyond myself. And each walkis different from the day before. Last week I heard the searching scream ofa red-tailed hawk soaring above.Yesterday, three largish deer noisily escaped through the marsh. Thismorning I stood still for a sweet little chickadee jumping from branch to branch in the sunshine. There was also a glimpse of the Sound, today a rich deep blue and the determined gurgle of the creek all around the bumps and bends.

The rock in this photograph isone that I think happens to look likea frog that sits and seems to wait for me. If I have to touch it every time I pass by, it’s not for good luck or as a memorial as important as those are,but rather as a simple, personal ritual, for me to connect with my yesterday, my today and mytomorrow. To ground me in real time to life.

... Marjorie Odell

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