Introduction

Exhausted, you struggle to your feet. Your legs burn as you slowly rise from the rocky beach. A quick scan up and down the beach reveals that you are alone. The sun has gone down and the temperature is beginning to drop. Cold and confused you look down at your feet and realize that you only have one shoe. It was probably lost during your desperate struggle to make it to the beach. You figure that you had better begin the long trek home. You plod slowly, stepping very gingerly on the rocks with your one shoeless foot, dripping cold seawater along the way. Along the beach and up a slight embankment, you look back at beach and marvel at how beautiful it is with the sun going down. It would be a perfect scene for a postcard, were it not for the flaming wreckage of your boat, gently bobbing up and down on the waves of the pacific.

British Columbia is a beautiful place, but after what happened tonight, you are not going to continue fighting to save that beauty in the same way anymore. You have gone on your last camp out to save the trees, the last international demonstration, the last nuclear protest and certainly the last anti-fishing boat mission. As of tonight you are no longer a member of any radical, one dimensionally thinking eco-interest group. No way. Not after tonight. Not after that mess.

‘There has to be more than one way to look at these issues’ you think to yourself as you make your way along the lightly trafficked roads back into town.

‘I’m going to choose one issue about our natural resources and really assess the impact it has on the environment.’

Your pace quickens as you begin to think about your new plan. You are no longer thinking about the pain in your foot. You are no longer thinking about the immense headache that has been causing you to wince with every step. The pain has been disappearing as your new outlook begins to take focus. The only thing that keeps you from breaking into an all out celebration is the fact that you have a lot of sand down your pants from when you washed up on shore like an injured fish.

‘Sand in my underwear or not, I’m going to make sure that the proper people find out about our natural resources and how we can protect them.’

No more craziness, no more explosions, no more speedboats and certainly no more sand in your underwear. Good Luck.