It connects the community.
It gives families and children access to nature.
It brings people together.
It serves various activities like hiking, biking, and nature walking.
When we walk this path we are getting great exercise. We meet people along the way, we talk, we connect and we build relationships that help us be a stronger, healthier, and more integrated community.
And there’s plenty of other value in the things to do along that trail…
It’s a magical place for kids. Along this trail, there are many stone-stacked-inukshuk-like guardians, one of which, is called the ‘Sudbury Rock Eater’. These stone stacks inspire the children to play and experience the stones on the bedrock. They make their own little stone art guardians. Children love exploring nature up close. Countless families have walked that path and had great benefit in doing so together. It’s quality time outdoors, but still close to home.
The moss and tree covered stone outcrops along the way are great places to explore a bit, take in the view, or just relax. Families can pick blueberries, collect labrador tea, and even find the edible boletes family mushrooms, that grow there.
Nature is there.
The northern flying squirrel has been sighted, and we even thought we heard an eastern whip-poor-will. Kind, old porcupines, squirrels, martens, hares, chipmunks, foxes and and many birds and other forest creatures make that unique place their home. It’s a precious forest ecology. It’s a special place. It’s community accessible nature up close. It’s an education about nature in a walk from one side of the neighborhood to the other.
It’s a precious little gem of an area in New Sudbury.
And here’s the real rub, these special places are so intrinsically intertwined in how people feel about where they live, that sometimes we don’t even realize how important that space is to us, until that special place is no longer there, and then ‘it suddenly feels so different’ and somethings missing that you can never get back. It’s an invaluable part of the community for that reason alone.
It naturally makes the community feel more complete.
This is a community benefit that increases the value of our homes, and makes the community what it is.
Spaces like this walking trail and the small corridor of ecology around it, are community assets. And the community recognizes that.
And that’s why communities everywhere should safeguard and nurture their precious natural spaces. These spaces serve the community in a very real way.
But must we say it…
This Forest Walking Trail is special.
A little forest walk here, can help people feel better. It settles emotions, relieves tensions, and alleviates anxieties. It’s a healing space.
Walking this path is a healthy thing to do. The air is fresh, naturally ionized, and walking on varying natural ground terrain helps people maintain the finer balancing muscles that need to be exercised as we age.. Otherwise we become unsure of our strength and struggle to keep good balance. It’s a place that induces health and fitness. People know this and they walk the trail because it’s the only accessible trail around that exercises these finer balancing muscles.
People walk, jog and bike on this trail. Families use this trail for quality time with each other. People walk their dogs along this trail. It’s a safe and people friendly trail.
There’s just a hundred reasons why this little natural forest walking trail makes a big difference in the community.
There are a hundred reasons why City Planning and the developer should consider how to integrate it into the subdivision plan.
And of course, let’s not forget to say how very grateful we are to the landowners for the decades long implicitly granted access to this space. We respect that, and appreciate it.
We truly cherish this area, and it is our hope and wish it is not all cut down, made inaccessible, blasted and then developed with asphalt roads and crushed gravel lots all over it.
We hope that you as the City, and you as the partners in it’s development, see the sacred beauty and natural value in this ecological buffer and walking trail corridor that is so precious to us.
Please, leave a naturally intact green-spacing trail there. Leave it for the kids to grow up walking that trail, just like we did.
PRESERVING THE TRAIL WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL ARNOLD FAMILY LEGACY
Name it what you will, but let’s save the Dalron Nickeldale Forest Walking Trail in New Sudbury.