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Three months ago, when a few fed-up locals created a Facebook group to try and get the woods around Kelowna cleaned up, they couldn’t have imagined the momentum their efforts would gather.
Today, the Okanagan Forest Task Force is an official, not-for-profit organization that has completely transformed some of the biggest eyesores in Kelowna’s wilderness through organized community cleanups.
Hauling garbage out of the woods is never an easy task, but next weekend the group is taking on a project that will be more than physically challenging.
On Nov. 5, the task force is holding a community event to clean up what was left behind after Terrance Landon went missing.
Landon had been living on crown land near James Lake, building a small cabin there. In December of 2013 he went missing, and hasn’t been seen since.
Landon’s trailer, cabin and vehicle have remained on crown land, and earlier this year the cabin was burned to the ground and the truck and camper vandalized.
Kane Blake, the OFTF’s president, says the location is a total mess: all of Landon’s clothes and belongings are strewn about, the cabin is in ashes and the truck is filling up with garbage.
“The truck has been shot at and the trailer has been trashed and ripped apart. We are doing this cleanup with sadness in our hearts and him in our thoughts,” he said.
The plan, Blake said, is to get rid of as much of the garbage as possible, tow away the truck and clean up all the nails and metal strewn about the site with a magnetic roller.
He said that cleaning up the site will obviously make the wilderness a little bit safer and more enjoyable, but will also be a service to Landon, who doesn’t deserve a legacy of garbage in the woods.
“He wasn’t someone who didn’t like living in the rat race downtown. He was actually an avid outdoorsman,” Blake said of Landon, pointing out that he lived in the woods because that’s where he wanted to be.
“This is a very special cleanup, and it’s with great sadness that we’re going to do this,” he said. “I wish we didn’t have to and we could all go up and say ‘hi’ and shake his hand.”
Blake asks anyone interested in volunteering for the cleanup to meet at James Lake at 9 a.m. on Nov. 5.
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