They’re not very obvious, these: I walked past this trail blaze for years before I finally spotted it. There are a whole series of arrows on Douglas fir trees, leading one through the Gabriola woods.
Of course, these days there’s a very clear path as well, but I expect that the arrows came first.
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There are lots of pails in the Gabriola forest, probably dating from the time when the forest was logged. Since then the pails have started blending in, bit by bit: trees fell on them, moss grew over them, salal grew around them. Every once in a while some hiker spots a bit of plastic, drags [...]
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Here’s another trailmarker in the Gabriola woods: a glass perfume bottle that sits on an old stump.
It’s always fun to see what weird stuff appears in the woods, but this one I worry about. The bottle is made out of glass, and the sun shines through that decorative stopper, which is also glass. Is it [...]
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Last June I found a front derailleur serving as a trail-marker in the Gabriola woods. And now, not too far away, here’s the rear derailleur.
(It marks the location of an awesome mushroom that I must remember to photograph in September, when it’ll be at its peak.)
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I know you’ve been waiting to see more of the mysterious antlers in the Gabriola woods, so here you go. For ages these antlers were twisted: one looked as it should, but the other had drooped down to point at the ground. We called them the twisty antlers. And then a few weeks ago – [...]
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This vase appeared in the middle of the Gabriola woods last year. Is it stranger that:
a) There’s a vase in the middle of the forest, or
b) Every time I pass there’s a new arrangement of greens or flowers, and fresh water?
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It’s amazing how much litter there is in the Gabriola woods, and it’s not just along the trail, either: some of it’s under a dense thicket of salal. I know this because I bush-crash through the woods fairly regularly, and discover lots of stuff in the process.
Under salal I find plastic water bottles, juice bottles, [...]
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These antlers are in the middle of nowhere in the Gabriola woods, where they mark a trail junction.
When I began to explore the obscure trails, I was always so pleased to find another set of antlers. It felt like a treasure hunt. Now that I think of it, finding new delights in the woods always [...]
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A while ago I showed you a Gabriola trailmarker made of a sharp thing stuck into a tree. This trailmarker looks even sharper, don’t you think? It’s on the trail down from the Middle of Nowhere Forest to the Middle of Nowhere Stream and Sodden Lands.
You’ll want your gumboots if you go past the [...]
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In the name of all that is sensible, tell me, please: why is this tree numbered? It’s on a trail in the middle of the Gabriola forest, and I don’t see a number 1 tree or a number 3 tree anywhere about the place.
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Here you go: another set of antlers in the Gabriola woods. Antlers are a more interesting sort of trailmarker than those trailmarkers in the 707; I wonder if that’s why nobody’s ripped them down. But then, most people don’t notice the antlers in the first place, so maybe that’s what protects them.
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I’ve mentioned the odd trailmarkers in the Gabriola woods before — here’s an other example.
Having strange things left in the forest helps a lot when I’m chatting with my hiking friend, and trying to tell her where I saw a colourful mushroom or something. I can say well, suppose you start at the washing machine [...]
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Two paths diverge in a Gabriola wood. This antler, wedged between two trees, marks the spot.
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A few years ago I started finding antlers mounted on trees in the Gabriola forest. Have you seen any of them? The antlers shown here were clean and white when I first saw them, but they’re turning green with age now.
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Continuing our sometimes-series on unusual trailmarkers in the Gabriola woods, I offer you this stunning specimen, which appeared within the last month or so.
What kind of horns do you think these are? Steer?
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I love the offbeat trail markers I find in the woods on Gabriola. This one is a bicycle derailleur (you know, the part that de-rails the chain from one cog or chain ring and moves it to another when you change gears) that’s been mounted on a branch.
I walked this trail for over a year [...]
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In the winter, this plastic containter was just one more piece of litter in Gabriola’s forest. But now? Somebody has built a trail in the middle of nowhere, and used this as a trailmarker. I don’t suppose you’ve come across it, have you?
Over the next while I’ll show you some other unusual Gabriola trailmarkers.
Filed in Gabriola Island, trails One Response so far
