Your story reminds me of my old home in northern Ontario (Red Rock, tiny little place off the Trans-Canada outside Nipigon).
The pine beetle ravaged that area many years before arriving in BC, and since then, the pulp mill (Domtar) in town went on what can only be called a rampage, and brought down just about everything with a needle or leaf in the area (which, I might add, is nothing more than one big swamp). The entire expanse along the five-mile-road into town is now a mess of wet black earth and standing pools, just waiting for some unsuspecting motorist to careen off the road and disappear. They've begun to plant grass seed upon it in some vain attempt to replicate the water-drawing effects of the willow that used to grow thickly there.
I miss how that place looked as a child. While I could never live there again, it was still my playground, the place where much of who and what I am was decided.
no subject
The pine beetle ravaged that area many years before arriving in BC, and since then, the pulp mill (Domtar) in town went on what can only be called a rampage, and brought down just about everything with a needle or leaf in the area (which, I might add, is nothing more than one big swamp). The entire expanse along the five-mile-road into town is now a mess of wet black earth and standing pools, just waiting for some unsuspecting motorist to careen off the road and disappear. They've begun to plant grass seed upon it in some vain attempt to replicate the water-drawing effects of the willow that used to grow thickly there.
I miss how that place looked as a child. While I could never live there again, it was still my playground, the place where much of who and what I am was decided.