“Exploring Tumbler Ridge” by Dr Charles Helm

A Review by Barry McKinnon

Exploring Tumbler Ridge by Dr Charles Helm is a wonderful, useful, and hopeful compendium that shows the importance of our relationship with geography, history, place and community in a world the daily news tells us is precariously heading to global catastrophe.

Dr Helm aptly establishes his stance with a quote from the writer and naturalist Wendell Berry:  To know who we are we need to know where we are.  Where are we?  Dr Helm’s local is Tumbler Ridge, a company coal mining town built in the early 80’s and almost abandoned in 2000 when world coal prices dropped.  Dr Helm stayed, hell or high water, because of his love for this beautiful place surrounded by the foothills of the Rockies, windy ridges, pristine rivers and waterfalls, caves, trails and forests. This is the natural world he describes. This is the context that leads him to say:  I still see Tumbler Ridge as an outpost of relative sanity in a hopelessly materialistic world, a place where our pervasive self-absorption can be sublimated into something more meaningful.

Exploring Tumbler Ridge is no ordinary trail guide/hiking book. Helm’s beautiful colour photos, full-size map and directions are really a lure - a secret shared, a prompt that says: go see for yourself! And once the place is seen and explored, you might ask who we are, and then clearly sense what we and the next generations could lose in the fast-track haste of insatiable global economies.

Helm also knows the irony, threat, and dilemmas of place: The re-opening of the coal mines “saved” the town’s economy, but industry is also the rough beast slouching toward us. To politically act in this reality Helm negotiates, researches, connects with politicians, CEOs, and various boards. He works tirelessly for what he values. He is smart, patient, non-confrontational - and often gets what he wants. If a company threatens a dinosaur trackway, Helm will politely educate and convince them to back off, and at the same time, use their helicopter to fly the artifacts out to the Tumbler Ridge Museum. There are a few stories like this that add an important level and strategy to the book: In a threatened world, negotiate and compromise but don’t sacrifice. See, know, and affect the big corporate picture as best you can. Cast a vote for nature and more votes will follow. Create consciousness and a local pride.

But the immediate message is simply this: Visit Tumbler Ridge. Go on even one of the 48 hikes mapped in this book. See for yourself and you’ll know!

Exploring Tumbler Ridge is good news that shines light and gives directions for the trail ahead.