Our Natural Home for the Holidays
By Ken Gurr (4 minute read)

Snowberries on Gabriola Island
When the chilling wind and driving snowstorm hit us at the end of November, who didn’t look up with concern at the bending and whipping of treetops, branches falling, and fir cones raining down? Nothing like a power outage and a few tree limbs cracking and thudding to ground for reminding our soft-bodied-selves we are indeed just another humble critter out in nature. Equally vulnerable. Yet, equally at home as well.
As December is a time to look back on the year and give thanks for the gifts we have and share with others, let’s also save some space for reflection and appreciation as “landholders” for our home: the natural world.
By far, most Gabriolans get this. The promise of island-life is deeply connected to the island’s natural beauty, forests, trails, and beaches. It’s what brought us here.
And “landholder,” rather than landowner, is a term the Gabriola Land and Trails Trust (GaLTT) uses with intention — whether you rent or have a land title document — because of the pre-empting of land from First Nations, and to recognize that Indigenous culture is bonded to the land they have held and cared for over thousands of years. For the Snuneymuxw People, humans are the land, and land is life; there is no distinction. So, the health and continued life cycles of nature rely on our awareness and care as landholders: our stewardship and conservation of all life around us for the comparatively short time we live here.
GaLTT’s Nature Stewards campaign asks all of us to do our best to conserve and let nature flourish on at least 30 percent of our properties. This links up with the world goal that nations and citizens groups are currently meeting about in Montreal for COP-15, the time-critical Biodiversity Summit.
If there is one thing we can take on as citizens is being aware that ecosystems are everywhere and need to function everywhere, not just in parks and nature preserves, but on the properties we currently hold. Over two-thirds of the island is private land, so it is up to all of us achieving 30 per cent conserved or protected by 2030.
Looking back again at those trees in the storm through fresh eyes, we see a synchronized dance of the forest community working together, flexing and swirling, giving way for the wind to pass through, helping prune and strengthen limbs and trunks. Birds and other wildlife hunker down in densely branched firs and thickets of willow, salal and sword fern. And, while we remember the “big blows” like this one and a few others in our lifetimes, it’s just one of countless events these forests will live through in their long, long lives. But only if we are good stewards and allow that to happen.
As author Rebecca Solnit wrote in a recent environmental piece in The Guardian:
“It is not the things we refrain from doing, but the things we do passionately, and together, that will count the most.”
This season, please take some time to remember all the natural gifts of this island in the Salish Sea, and resolve to keep up with efforts to conserve and enhance nature for generations to come.