The Colonizer

Alnus Rubra, a photo by i like bees on Flickr.
The ubiquitous Red Alder.  Colonizer of stream banks, fixer of nitrogen (with a little help from Frankia alni) and favorite of Olympic Peninsula beavers.  Seldom do we get to see the rootstock of this plant so clearly, ripped from the banks of some stream or river, cleansed and polished by the waves and rocks of the ocean, and deposited here, almost as if dissected, upon the western shore of the continent.

I love the colors here:  reddish and glowing, the color of the wood suggesting the name... and yet this plant is named not for the hue of the wood, but rather the beautiful red cast of the branch tips from a distance when they bear their winter catkins.  Alder attains sizes that are not great, and lives a life short by contrast with most of our other trees.  Yet, like all the other components of our native ecosystem, this tree plays a key (and often beautiful) place in the wild.

Red Alder color cast:  Skokomish Valley Red Alder

Red Alder, covered in ice:  Quinault Valley Icy Alder

An Amazing Jumble

An Amazing Jumble, a photo by i like bees on Flickr.

The mouth of the Queets.  Is it the shortest wildest river in Washington?  Is it the most remarkable rainforest river of all?  Irrespective of the answer, it is certainly remarkable.  By some fluke of historic land preservation, the wild banks of the Queets were nearly protected from the incursion of the big saws almost to the mouth.  It's not to say that the watershed wasn't cut-over:  quite the contrary, the Queets was treated poorly, just like them all.  But along the banks?  Big Spruce reach nearly to the mouth.

And north of where this short but sacred river reaches the Pacific, the largest pile of driftwood and logs I know of sits, slowly expanding, huge trees joining the jumble and ever so slowly building a steep, cobble beach.  Here big rocks are piled on old logs (with the odd bit of marine detritus, and old boat or two, and even a few growing trees here and there), balanced after each big storm or high tide, pushed up from the ocean and mixed with the discharge of every new flood.  The Queets is a special river, from high subalpine meadows, through the channels watched by the Valhallas, to deep rainforest glades with towering Spruce and Fir, to the log choked junction with the wild eastern shore of the ocean.  Oh Queets, you may be short, but you are the essence of wild!

This link to the Queets streamflow gauge is fun to watch when a big Pacific storm blows in:
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=sew&gage=quew1&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 

Lone Juniper

Lone Juniper, a photo by i like bees on Flickr.

It's the beginning of winter, and the rains are finally returning after a dry spell that nearly -- but only nearly -- made this December the driest December on record.  What better time to post a photo from the desert, of a wild tree, in this case, the only tree for miles around.  I just returned from the wet west side of the Olympics, reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire shrouded (in a shrine) under the branches of an enormous Sitka Spruce.  Having just finished this magnificent homage to the wild of the desert, I post this photo in this same spirit.

This tree grows on BLM land, in Eastern Oregon.  To find it you need merely to take terrible roads into the desolate Alvord Hills, and then leave the roads behind (just like Abbey!) and wander a while.  You might run into pronghorn, or rattlesnakes, and certainly lizards, and if you're lucky, all three!  If you find this solitary tree, sit a while and think of the seed from whence it grew, carried here on winds from the Steens, landing by chance in this sagebrush wilderness and finding just the right conditions to survive, to grow, perhaps to thrive.  What makes this tree different?  What sets this one apart?  Those are questions only we humans can ask.... to this tree -- only another day, sunlight, the quest for water and the endurance of life in the desert.  In your spirit, Abbey.

The Wild SF of the Hoh

South Fork of the Hoh, a photo by i like bees on Flickr.

You turn off Highway 101 and head to the Hoh. But not that Hoh. Instead, you drive along a very quiet paved road, and see no tourists. No signs for the rainforest, no rainforest outfitters.  Definitely no coffee. Instead, endless miles of very, very young trees.  If you look as you drive, you can see the giant old stumps of an ancient forest.  You follow poor signage and try not to end up on some random logging road, and the closer you get, the narrower the road is, the stranger the place feels... but eventually, you cross a beautiful river, water flowing across carved sandstone.

Continuing on, the road turns, and up, up you go, to a level bench, recently logged off.  You wonder:  surely, this must be the road, but this is so confusing -- no signs!  A few more turns, more uncertainty -- perhaps you get out your map.  But, yes, finally, the road ends, you park, get out of your car, and there is the trusty trailhead sign, confirming that you have indeed arrived at a destination few seek.  A few miles of trail lead to a place truly remote: the SF of the Hoh. Here bear walk in winter, giant spruce trees form columns along the trail, and you are in a place that is truly wild.

The Spiral Giant

Giant Old Snag, a photo by i like bees on Flickr.

I recently was told by someone, describing how another person had described me, that I simply wanted to be a tree. I suppose on some level this is true. I love the bravery of trees, the courage to pick a place to be, to grow, to put down roots and to be part of a community, irrespective of what comes. This to me is one of the great things about forests, and one of the best qualities of people: resilience.

Beyond that, there is a majestic beauty to trees, especially to old and ancient ones, that speaks to me on a profound level. Recently I had the fortune to find one of those wild, rare places full of ancient cedars, unexpected, a secret hidden off of a logging road and entirely unexpected. I know it is a place that I will return to again and again, and I seek to share a portion of it with you through this post, and through this photo. Hard to take photos of trees in the first place and capture the size, the aspect, the context, harder still in rain and with poor light. But this photo perhaps gives a sense...