they baked an angelfood cake, it would come out of the oven a distinct 
     
     pink. The children sometimes slept under overturned dories. But 
     
    

    
     they had the time of their lives. The lighthouse had to be constantly 
     
     manned. There were dances and picnics. Later Government canning 
     
     inspections became more stringent, Milligan's Wharf developed, and 
     
    

    
     the channel running between two sections of the sandhills at Conway 
     
     Inlet deepened allowing the boats easy access to the main island. 
     
    

    
     And the lobster factories on the sandhills became obsolete. Until a 
     
     few years ago, an old weatherbeaten lighthouse still marked a factory 
     
     site, but even it is gone now, moved to the mainland to become part 
     
    

    
     of a large house. No trace of the factories remains. Farmers stopped 
     
     coming across to gather the hay, and man's presence out there became 
     
     more and more occasional, the unstable sands and strong winds rapidly 
     
     obliterating any traces of his temporary incursions. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Later, the military invaded and set up big targets on the sand- 
     
     hills for aerial gunning practice. Spent cartridges still occasionally 
     
     protrude through the sand. But lobster factories, hay mowing and 
     
     even occasional military manoeuvres represent inroads by man in an age 
     
     of gentler technology and the sandhills have been able to revert to 
     
     a natural state. Now it is a deserted expanse, a nesting place for 
     
     black ducks, mergansers, terns, and herring gulls. In spring, plovers, 
     
     sandpipers and other shore birds arrive, loons call from protected 
     
     bays, and occasional brant stop off. In the fall, geese rest here on 
     
     their way south, thousands of cormorants move overhead and large 
     
     groups of eiders feed offshore. There are a few hunters' blinds, and 
     
     the carcass of an abandoned dune buggy on the beach, the scars of 
     
     its tracks still marring the grassy dunes with parallel lines. On 
     
     summer Sundays, clam-diggers and picnickers go across and fox hunters 
     
     and snowmobilers in the cold months. 
     
    
   
   
    
     But in spite of their actual proximity, the sandhills have 
     
     retained a flavor of remoteness where man is an occasional, temporary 
     
     visitor. And, in a world increasingly paved and polluted, crowded 
     
     and cosmeticicized, such places are becoming rare and, consequently, 
     
     infinitely more valuable to retain in a natural state. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The situation regarding the sandhills is potentially fragile. 
     
     One road across would permit access to dune buggies, dirt-bikes, 
     
     winabegos, hook-ups, shore lots and all the trappings of shoddy 
     
     commercial development evident on more and more of the shoreline of 
     
     Prince Edward Island, and unlike man's earlier activities on the 
     
     sandhills, our technology today poses an irreversible threat to so 
     
     fragile an area. We must ensure that the sandhills do remain inviolate, 
     
     that man remains an infrequent visitor, that the sanctity and primaeval 
     
     loneliness of these beaches and dunes retain their mystery and silence. 
     
     As Paul Brooks wrote in his biography of Rachel Carsonl: 
     
    
   
   
    
     "Somewhere we should know what was nature's way; we should 
     
     know what the earth would have been had not man interfered. 
     
     And so, besides public parks and recreation, we should set 
     
     aside some wilderness areas of seashore where the relations 
     
     of sea and wind and shore - of living things and their 
     
     physical world - remain as they have been over the long 
     
     vistas of time in which man did not exist. For there 
     
     remains, in this space age universe, the possibility that 
     
     man's way is not always best". 
     
    
   
   
    
     1 Paul Brooks "The House of Life". 
     
    
   
   
    
     Jock HOOper 
     
     Freeland 
     
     Prince Edward Island