Goldstream Provincial Park is a beautiful spot accessed by a sketchy turn on to/off of the Island Highway at the southern end of the Malahat drive. The park includes important salmon spawning waterways (Goldstream river) opening into Finlayson Arm, and lies alongside a Pauquachin nation reserve. It is home to two kinds of ecosystems: a drier arbutus and succulent plant life area with snakes and wind, and a damp, dark-green douglas fir & cedar forest with 600-yr-old trees and ferns taller than me. There is also a brackish tidal mudflat at the river delta, which I spent a lot of time in as a kid digging for clams and flipping over rocks to see tiny dungeoness crabs scatter. Now the entire mudflat is protected, and no boats or pedestrians are allowed in to keep nature undisturbed.
Always nice to visit, after spending so much time there as a kid it feels like home. I pointed out a sand hill Elizabeth and I used to play in, and Mum said she and her brothers played there as kids too! If there is such a thing as a soul-home, this is probably it for me.
