My hopes in completing this book was to showcase Sumas Mountain as an important ecological island, filled with wildlife and ecosystems that need us to take greater care and thought in every thing we do. I wanted to tell a story that asks questions, pokes holes in accepted thought patterns, and encourages us to slow down and embody our surroundings.

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I don’t call the streets by their names, but instead by the squirrel who lives in the tree, or the frog who croaks in the creek, or the hummingbird and the owl and the raven, who chirp and call and chatter nearby. Sema:th belongs to them and the mountain they call home. They are it’s true inhabitants and will forever be remembered and identified, at least by me, in this way.

Spend time with the rhythm of the land, in the breath of the trees, then perhaps you can decide on a narrative that brings us together, rather than isolates. The question is whether we are brave enough to take the first step, whether we have the courage to notice before we can even begin to see.

Soon, the mountain known as Sumas, will no longer be an idol of Abbotsford. Instead it may become a victim to modern urban sprawl, where remnants of the past are limited to the memories we work to hold onto.

It is your responsibility to self reflect and contemplate what led us to the place we are now, what will lead us to where we are going, and what we can bring to the table along the way.

Now and then moments may arise where time is fooled and all the fragmented pieces in your busy world cease to exist.

Accessing the paradoxes, intricacies, and emptiness that exists in the fragments of Sappho’s poetry, a hazard of history, leaves the reader standing on a bridge between reasonable thought and passionate expression uncertain which way to go because there are gaping holes in every direction.

In all walks of life, throughout history, a sense of equilibrium is ever present if one looks closely enough, but is not always completely attainable.