First
I would like to say Happy New Year to all of you and wish you all the
best. Your support in this project has been very rewarding to me and to
those who find us on the Internet and learn. This winter issue of the
Echoes should bring us all up square for the year. Your patience was
appreciated.
Through the researching of Echo Mountain House and subsequent fire, I
realized how similar it relates to some of our lives. Out of the struggles
and rewards that come with building, and the subsequent tragedy in its
demise, not always by our own hands, we can only hope that like the
Phoenix, we can once again rise up, and start again. We must be strong.
So it has been with Mt. Lowe. Through the thick and thin of fires, floods,
and windstorms, though some of you may see only ruins, there is a life
there that beats, and beckons us to remember and rebuild. The Scenic Mount
Lowe Railway has stood the test of time, lived long beyond the ghosts, and
breathes new life into itself with every new discovery, in a child's
heart.
I hope that each and every one of you takes a moment in this New Year of
2000, to share Mount Lowe with another person, be it a child, peer, or
elder. Only that way, will it survive.
Jake Brouwer