Along Cougar Creek, up on the side of the hill is a pathway for hikers. Below that a rail track along which trains come at a remarkable and sometimes surprising speed. Then there is a boggy section, the creek itself and another then walkway and last a fence. There is also the highway that cuts through the area crossing the Fraser River, elevated at a tremendous hight. The fence is there to protect the industrial area under the highway but itches now breached in so many places by fallen trees and here and there accidentally backed over by trucks being backed up to the edge of the greenway to be put into storage that is seems to be more symbolic than useful. Underneath all of this is the usual pipeline, here a large city sewage pipe, aromatic in the worse way. The real reason any of these trees are here, or the hiking paths and creek survive, is that the sewage pipe is there. This ribbon of trees, birds, beavers (always flooding the bog by blocking the creek), ducks, heron and I guess once some cougars, is that this sewage pipe. Anywhere within the city limits I find nature seemingly winning a struggle against human occupation it usually is due to a sewerage pipe, oil pipeline or high pressure gas line buried under a few feet of dirt. I wish for once a greenways seemed to be there because we realised in time we needed a greenway.
