Seven Oaks Magazine.

God knows that the uber-religious and millennially-inclined in our society have enough to worry about; between gay marriages, seemingly-constant war in ancient biblical lands and Girls Gone Wild, I can’t throw a communion wafer these days without hitting one of the Lord’s children sounding off about the End Times. It’s good news all around for Jack Van Impe’s copy writers: torrential rains hit crops in North Korea this past week, while the Gambian government declared a state of emergency as the African nation braced itself for an anticipated plague of locusts. Meanwhile, fire roared across a parched British Columbia, whose emergency service workers struggle to make due under budgetary constraints set by a premier more interested in wetting his whistle than his forests.

In what seems to be a ringing endorsement of the more apocalyptic reading of these natural disasters, last weekend B.C.’s flammability swerved in a direction that seems wholly consistent with the vengeful-God theory. If Jehovah really is angry that we’ve abandoned our humility, our modesty and our work ethic, He made it clear by sending His righteous inferno down on B.C’s most idyllic/creepy celebration of hedonism: the infamously clothing-optional Wreck Beach at the University of British Columbia. According to CTV.ca, the fire “manage[d] to blacken four square kilometers of land on the cliffs overlooking” the famed nudist destination.

The first thoughts that might come to the minds of most people reading that story would likely relate to the ecological devastation wrought on a precious and valuable ecosystem; others might wonder aloud whether anyone had been hurt in the blaze; others still might praise the heroism of the cash-strapped firefighters who put the fire out. My only thought? How mad was the hippy with the driftwood walking stick who admonished me years ago for my unnecessary fire-pit building when he found out about this?

You see, anyone who has been to our fair city’s seaside nether-region knows that there are certain regular fixtures at Wreck Beach. Most of the players are part of a rotating cast: UBC frat boys hoping to catch a glimpse of firm, nubile breasts; youngsters just old enough to hit the beach in the hopes of buying contraband from night-time beer vendors making their way across the shoreline; countless sets of sandy testicles bouncing in pursuit of wayward Frisbees. But all those folks tend to come and go. The heart of Wreck Beach is the core group of hippies who rule it, patrolling the beach, chastising polluters, and saying things like “Be good to the beach, and she’ll be good to you.” The slightest perceived transgression against the beach will bring on a massive, self-righteous lecture (yes, even hippies can be self-righteous) from under the braided hair of a Wiccan beach bum who’ll astound you with the most indignant assertion of entitlement from a white person you’ve heard since the Musqueam started asking for market rates on the land they lease to South Van Caucasians. The Grand Patchouli Council rules the beach with a crushed-velvet benevolence that makes abundantly clear their deep attachment to a very beautiful strip of nature.

The news of the fire comes on the heels of another story related to the well-being of the only place in the city where the simultaneous sight of crabs and genitalia needn’t be cause for alarm. It hasn’t been a good year for Wreck Beach enthusiasts. The Wreck Beach Conservation Society has gone to the GVRD with thousands of signatures opposing UBC’s plans to build several student residence towers overlooking the beach -- a plan which will curtail a very highly-valued privacy, as well as presenting the potential for ecological disaster through the erosion of hills.

All of which leads to yet another horseperson of the Apocalypse: in this instance, I’m foregoing my standard-issue Marxist disdain for the hackey-sack crowd, and siding with the hippies. Wreck Beach is one of our city’s treasures; a place of staggering natural beauty (as well as staggering natural “Yecch!”) that deserves to be protected from human-caused fires, insensitive architectural planning and God’s wrath. To those developers, careless smokers and bonfire enthusiasts who threaten Wreck’s well-being, I’d like to share a bit of unnecessarily-gendered wisdom that I picked up on my travels along this wild and beautiful road we call life: Be good to the beach, man, and she’ll be good to you.