Your recent article about the broken teapots on Teapot Hill had a very odd emphasis (“Broken teapots removed from Teapot Hill by concerned hiker,” Chilliwack Progress, July 30, 2020).
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It’s as if the villains are the people who leave teapots up there in the first place and not the people who break them.
Nobody wants to find every woodland trail adorned with human artifacts, but in this case there’s a well established tradition.
Children love to see how many teapots they can count. And obviously I’m not the only adult who thinks the teapots add (or used to add) charm and a touch of magic to an already pleasant hike.
Unfortunately, there are people who are threatened by charm and magic and will destroy it whenever they get the chance.
I’m not sure why they would trudge all the way up Teapot Hill to ruin things for the rest of us when all they have to do is keep throwing their beer cans on the road and dumping their garbage beside the river.
I certainly don’t buy the argument that all these teapots get broken by winter’s “repeated cycle of freeze-and-thaw.”
These teapots get broken by rocks, and rocks get thrown by human beings.
It’s a real shame that well-meaning people can no longer indulge in a bit of Teapot Hill whimsy, but it’s not their fault.
This is, after all, the age of the Yahoo.
A couple of years ago I hiked up Teapot Hill and found that all the teapots had disappeared, so a few days later I put a few in my pack and went back up to start a new cycle.
Then I phoned the contractor to ask why they were removed, and she explained about the vandalism that was becoming a problem even then.
She was under strict orders to keep Teapot Hill free of teapots, but it was a frustrating business because the teapots kept coming back.
She said she and her crew were extremely grateful that the place wasn’t called Refrigerator Hill.
Graham Dowden
Chilliwack
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