Too good to waste

It was such a beautiful day, too good to waste. Coming home from running errands, I dashed inside, grabbed the camera and headed for the hills. Too much of a hurry. I found, too late, that I'd grabbed the wrong camera, one I'd been trying to repair. Luckily, I still had the pocket camera.

When I was a kid on the far side of this island, I liked to sit outside in the stern of our little boat on trips to Tahsis so I could watch the evergreen forests slide by, so dark and secret, so alien, home to cougars and deer, not us. In some spots, high above the water, the solid bones of the mountains rose to the surface; pure rock, without even cracks for the evergreens to force open with their roots. Not bare rock, though. In this wet corner of the rain forests, the rock bore, bears still, a thick cushion of moss.

Once I climbed the hill behind our house. Through a trackless belt of hemlock and Douglas-fir, breaking at the foot of a cliff into dense salal shrubs, then, as the rock repelled even the persistent roots of the salal, the golden moss burst into sunlight. I climbed to the edge of the forest above, and sat on the moss. From there, I was alone in the world; our settlement, a few houses on the shore, was hidden. The sun warmed the moss, and me.

I didn't stay long; we kids had been warned to stay out of the bush after 5, even on long summer days; the evening and night belonged to the cougars.

Now, here on the east coast of the island, on this bright afternoon, I visited a small patch of mossy rock on a steep hillside, pocket camera in hand.

From halfway down the hill. I didn't sit on the moss this time; it was soaking wet.

Staring into the sun. Glints off the water of Mirror Lake. The blue water is Echo Lake. The road below is a logging road.

Nearing the bottom. Dried, winter-bare branches of Scotch broom and oceanspray bush.

The broom is a pestiferous invasive species; I hate to see it settle in on this hillside. But it makes a nice lacey frill on the steep part of the hill, and in summer, when the moss is dry and brown, the broom paints the hillside in bright yellow.

Random shot as I walked. Somehow, this "speaks" to me.

Are those pussywillows at the bottom of the hill? I think they are!

I didn't go down to the road beneath, this trip, because where the climb gets really steep, the moss was soggy and very slippery. Leave that to summer days.

Lichens and moss from this spot, tomorrow.

(The links above ("Tahsis" and "high above the water" take you to a page with photos of the Tahsis hills.)

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Era un dia hermoso, no se podría desperdiciar. Regresando a casa después de hacer unos mandados. corrí a recoger la cámara y salí a prisa para visitar un sitio favorito en el bosque. Me apuré demasiado; descubrí al llegar a mi objetivo que traía la cámara vieja, que había estado tratando de componer. Por suerte, también traía mi camarita de bolsillo.

Cuando era niña, en la costa opuesta de esta isla, me gustaba sentarme afuera en la popa de nuestro barquito cuando íbamos al pueblo de Tahsis. Me gustaba ver como se deslizaban los bosques perennes, tan oscuros, tan secretos; el territorio de pumas y venados, allí nosotros éramos los invasores. En algunos sitios, muy por arriba del agua, el esqueleto de las montañas se descubría; roca pura, sin ni siquiera grietas que los abetos podrían abrir con sus raices fuertes. No era roca desnuda, en este rincón del bosque pluvial; aquí la roca llevaba un grueso cojín de musgos.

Una vez subí la montaña atrás de nuestra casa. Pasé por un bosque sin sendero alguno, un bosque de árboles perennes, los abetos de Douglas y Hemlock, abriéndose al pie de un despeñadero en un matorral denso de los arbustos Gaultheria shallon, y pasado este, llegué a donde el musgo dorado se bañaba por el sol. Subí hasta el borde del bosque superior, y allí me senté en el cojín del musgo. Desde allí me parecía que estaba yo sola en el mundo; nuestras pocas casas al borde del agua estaban escondidas tras los abetos. El sol nos calentaba; al musgo y a mí.

No me quedé mucho rato; nos habían inculcado bien que teníamos que estar fuera del bosque a las cinco de la tarde, aun en esos dias largos de verano; el atardecer y la noche eran propiedad de las pumas.

Ahora, aquí en esta costa del este de la isla, en esta tarde luminosa, visité unas rocas cubiertas de musgo en un acantilado, con la cámara de bolsillo en la mano.

Fotos:

1. Vista desde la mitad de la bajada. No me senté en el musgo esta vez, pues estaba bien empapado.
2. Mirando directamente hacia el sol. La luz brilla en el agua del lago Mirror (espejo). Lo azul es el lago Echo. El camino allá abajo es un camino de madereros.
3. Cerca de este camino, con ramas secas de retama negra y de "espray de oceano", Holodiscus discolor. La retama negra es una planta nociva e invasiva; no me gusta ver como empieza a cubrir este sitio. Pero en invierno hace un encaje en el borde de la roca, y en verano, cuando el musgo está seco y color de café, llena el espacio de un amarillo brillante.
4. Foto al azahar mientras caminaba. Por alguna razón esta vista me hace sentirme en casa.
5. Sauces de gatito, o sea los botones peludos del sauce. Lo más distante que llegaba a operar la cámera; no bajé hasta el camino porque el último tramo del declive estaba muy empinado y el musgo empapado estaba resbaloso.

Mañana, habrá líquenes y musgos de este sitio.

(Los dos enlaces arriba te llevan a una página con fotos desde los cerros alrededor de Tahsis.)

Fallen fixer

Rock a bye babylichen, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come babylichen, cradle and all.

(Nursery lullaby, adapted for BC forests.)

After the winter storms, the forest floor is littered with tree-top lichens. Some, like the loosely-attached bone lichens, fall in small handfuls; the lungworts, heavy with rain and often growing intermingled with soggy moss, bring down whole branches, sometimes small trees.

Lungwort, Lobaria pulmonaria

All to the good.

Although lungwort’s main photobiont is a green alga, (Symbiochloris reticulata), it is also a type of cyanolichen, which means that it contains nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Nostoc sp.). When these lichens fall to the ground after a storm or wind event, they decompose into the forest floor, contributing their nitrogen reserve to the soil. (US Forest Service)

Definitions:

• Photobiont: one of the components of a lichen with the ability to photosynthesize; the algae and the bacteria. The fungal component is non-photosynthetic.
• Nitrogen-fixation: atmospheric nitrogen is converted into nitrates or nitrites, which are then usable by the fungal component of the lichen, and once delivered to the soil, by forest plants.

Part of a whole fallen branch, coated with moss and lungwort.

Some of this fixed nitrogen reaches the ground regularly, leached from its tree-top garden by the usual rains. Then a good storm takes a hand ...

Despite representing a small part of the total aboveground litter biomass (up to 2.3%), L. pulmonaria litter releases up to 11.5% of the total N input from aboveground litterfall. ... The decomposition process of cyanolichens ... can release up to 2.1 kg of newly fixed N per hectare per year, which would otherwise remain unavailable. (MDPI)

In the forest, nothing goes to waste.

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Arrorró mi nenelíquen, en la copa del árbol,

Cuando sopla el viento, se mecerá tu cuna,

Cuando se rompa la rama, se caerá tu cuna,

Y vendrás pa' abajo, mi nenelíquen, con cuna y todo.

(Canción infantil tradicional, adaptada para los bosques de nuestra isla.)

Después de las tormentas invernales, el suelo en el bosque está cubierto de los liquenes que crecen allá arriba, entre las copas de los árboles. Algunos, como por ejemplo los liquenes "hueso", que cuelgan aflojadamente de las ramas, llegan en pequeños ramilletes; los liquenes Pulmonaria de árbol, pesados a razón del agua, viviendo en conjunto con musgos igualmente empapados, vienen para abajo en grandes trozos, inclusive con ramas o arbolitos enteros.

Foto: un trozo de Lobaria pulmonaria en el suelo.

Todo va bien.

Aunque el fotobionte principal del líquen L. pulmonaria es un alga verde, Symbiochloris reticulata, es también un tipo de cianoliquen, que contiene bacterias que fijan el nitrógeno (Nostoc sp.). Cuando estos líquenes caen al suelo después de una tormenta o un viento fuerte, se descomponen, integrándose al suelo del bosque, contribuyendo su reserva de nitrógeno a la tierra. (US Forest Service)

Definiciones:

• Fotobionte: uno de los componentes de un liquen que tienen la capacidad de llevar a cabo la fotosíntesis, o sea un alga o una bacteria. El hongo que forma el tercer miembro del liquen no tiene esta capacidad.
• Fijación de nitrógeno: el proceso de formar nitratos y nitritos a base del nitrógeno atmosférico, haciéndolo aprovechable por el hongo, y, al caerse al suelo, por las plantas del bosque.

Foto: parte de una rama grande caída, cubierta de líquenes Pulmonaria, y de musgos.

Una parte de este nitrógeno utilizable llega al suelo frecuentemente, filtrado desde su jardín en lo alto por las lluvias. Y luego hay una buena tormenta ...

Aunque representa una pequeña fracción de la biomasa caída sobre el terreno (hasta el 2.3 %), la materia caída sobre el suelo de L. pulmonaria libera hasta 11.5 % del ingreso total de nitrógeno del esta materia. ... El proceso de descomposición de los cianolíquenes ... puede liberar hasta 2.1 kg. de nitrógeno recién fijado por hectarea anualmente, el cual de otra manera no se podría utilizar. (MDPI)

En el bosque nada se desperdicia.

Going somewhere, maybe

There's always a bend in the road. And I must explore until the road becomes too rough for my little car.

On a misty, occasionally rainy, early spring afternoon, I took this photo through the windshield.

Unnamed road, going I don't know where.

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Siempre hay otra vuelta en el camino, y yo, pues, estoy obligada a seguir explorando mientras el camino no amenace mis llantas. Esta foto la saqué desde dentro del coche, en una tarde nublada, un poco lluviosa, a principios de la primavera. Un camino sin nombre, que iba no sé donde.

Painted by rain

On the way home from the beaver pond, I stopped in at a favourite summer sit spot.  A short distance off the highway, there's a faint trail going down to a wide rock outcropping covered, in summer, with dry, crunchy, brownish moss. A good place to sit in the sunshine, listening to the wind in the evergreens, watching the dragonflies zipping back and forth. There must be a creek, or a small pool, down there by the roots of the trees. In spots, where the rock is cracked, saskatoons and huckleberries grow. Single stems of grasses poke up through the moss, waving their heads. I sit until the sun starts to burn, then climb the hill again to the bustle and hurry of the highway and the town.

No sitting this time. After two weeks of rain, the moss is soaked; my shoes are soon wet. And now it has changed colour to a bright, almost neon yellow-green.

Top of the rock.

I was looking for mushrooms; all that rain surely must have encouraged them. And yes, I found them. They're all over, in that photo above, but so small they can't be seen at any distance. I had to get my knees wet to get photos.

4 mushrooms here. Do you see the fourth?

I stopped to take photos of lichen on a few stumps, but now it was raining again, and I was hurrying.

Lichens, mainly Cladonia sp., and moss.

On my way back up the hill, I turned to check out the weather; was that clear sky over there? Well, sort of.

Mostly grey, mostly wet.

Back at the highway a bit of the rock, where the road crews cut through to build the highway, shows how thin that layer of moss is. Just a layer of bright paint, a fingertip deep.

The rock is too solid, mostly, even here where construction has cracked it, for the trees to get a good footing.

The pale yellowish lines in the trees behind the rock are where the recent storms broke the trees, splitting the wood as the top fell.

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En camino a casa después de visitar la laguna de los castores, me detuve en un sitio donde me acostumbro tomar el sol en el verano. A poca distancia de la carretera, hay un senderito, apenas marcado, que baja hasta un afloramiento rocoso cubierto, en el verano, con una capa de musgo seco, crujiente, de color café claro. Es un buen lugar para sentarme, allí en el sol, escuchando el murmullo de la brisa entre las ramas, mirando las libélulas que van y vienen; debe haber un riachuelo o un pocito de agua en el arroyo. En sitios donde la roca está agrietada, crecen los saskatún y los arándanos rojos (huckleberries). Tallos de gramíneas se erigen sobre el musgo, agitando sus cabezas. Yo me quedo sentada hasta que el sol me empieza a quemar, y luego subo el camino otra vez, hacia el apuro y ruido de la carretera y el pueblo.

No me pude sentar esta vez. Después de dos semanas de lluvia, el musgo está empapado; en poco tiempo mis zapatos también lo estaban. Y ahora el musgo ha cambiado de color; es un verde/amarillo fuerte, casi fluorescente.

Foto #1: Parte del afloramiento con su musgo amarillo.

Buscaba hongos; por cierto, con toda esa lluvia los debe haber. Y sí; en abundancia, pero tan pequeños que no se ven sin agacharse. Me tuve que mojar las rodillas para verlos de cerca.

Foto #2: Cuatro honguitos. ¿Puedes ver el cuarto?

#3: Me detuve a sacar fotos de troncos con líquenes, pero ya estaba lloviendo de nuevo, y me estaba apurando. Aquí, un tronco con líquenes, principalmente Cladonia spp. y musgos.

#4: Subiendo por el camino, me di vuelta para mirar el cielo: ¿iba a seguir lloviendo, o no? Había un poquitito de cielo azul.

#5: Al llegar a la carretera, hay un corte en la roca, hecha para pasar la carretera, y muestra cuan delgada es la capa de musgos. Un baño de pintura apenas, de la profundidad de la primera articulación de uno de mis dedos. La roca es tan sólida, aun aquí donde las constructoras de carreteras la rompieron, que los árboles todavía no han logrado establecerse. Las lineas amarillas entre los árboles atrás de la roca son troncos pelados donde las tormentas recientes los rompieron.

Deciding on a name

 It's been a long, hot, dry summer here in the rainforest. But it rained last night, briefly and scantly. But it was rain! And today, the skies are our normal grey, the humidity is 85%, and it's 13°C. Feels like fall, finally!

I'm still searching for spiders for Arachtober. Meanwhile, here's Lake Nameless.

Green water, with hidden heron.

This is from last April, while the salmon berries were just putting out their first leaves. The lake is beside the route to Brown's Bay, one of two lakes too small to earn names. This one, from Google maps, has a sort of dolphin shape; should I rename it Dolphin Lake?

Google maps image.

I was trying to get close enough for a photo of a heron, but I took one step into that salmonberry thicket, and immediately sunk up to my ankles in sticky mud. I managed to escape without losing a shoe; I was lucky. Maybe I should name it Booby Trap Lake, instead.

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Ha sido un verano largo, caluroso, y seco aquí en los bosques pluviales de la isla. Pero, por fin, llovió anoche. Unos momentos de lluvia escasa, pero sí que fue lluvia. Y hoy el cielo es del color normal: gris. La humedad está a 85 porciento, y la temperatura es 13°. Empieza a tener señales de otoño. ¡Ya era hora!

Sigo buscando arañas para el mes de Arachtober.  Por mientras, aquí está una foto de un laguito sin nombre. Esto es en el mes de abril pasado, cuando las primeras hojas de "salmonberry" arbustos apenas brotaban. El lago está situado al lado del camino a Brown's Bay, uno de dos laguitos tan pequeños que no han recibido nombre. Este, mirado en Google Maps, parece un delfín; creo que le llamaré Lago Delfín.

O tal vez no. Trataba de llegar a la orilla para sacar una foto de una garza, pero al dar un solo paso bajo esos arbustos, me hundí hasta los tobillos en lodo pegajoso. Logré escapar sin perder un zapato; tuve suerte. Tal vez sería mejor llamar el lago "Trampa Cazabobos"

Green, green, green

Even in a dry spell, the island rainforest has an almost tropical lushness. Here, on the slope above the river, where the sunlight barely filters down through the leaves overhead, everything is green, from the deep blue-greens of the sword fern, to the muted greens of drying moss, ranging from a golden glow to a deep greenish brown, the pure tones of the licorice ferns that grow in the moss, the palest of greens of lichens, to the radiant yellow-green of maple leaves above. Even the river that wends its way along the bottom of the valley shows up green.

Sword ferns, licorice ferns, moss, maples, Douglas fir, lichens, and a froth of huckleberries.

And today it rained. The ferns (and I) are happy.

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Hasta en tiempo de sequía, el bosque pluvial de la isla tiene una exuberancia casi tropical. Aquí, subiendo del rio, donde la luz del sol apenas llega a penetrar, todo es verde, desde los verdes oscuros de los helechos perennes, a los verdes apagados de los musgos, que van de un brillo de oro a un café con tonos verdes, el verde puro de los helechos de raiz dulce que brotan del musgo, o el verde tenue, casi blanco de los líquenes, hasta el verde-amarillo radiante de las hojas del arce. Aun el rio que serpentea en el fondo del valle toma su color del bosque.

Foto: vista del bosque: helechos, musgos, líquenes, arces, abetos de Douglas, y hojitas de huckleberry.

Y hoy llovió. El bosque y yo estamos felices.

What keeps us green

 A rainy afternoon.

Side road near Upper Campbell Lake dam. With Scotch broom. (Zoom in; you'll see raindrops.)

And on the edge of the rain clouds, muted rainy day colours.

Echo Lake, 2:30 PM.

A Skywatch post.

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Una tarde lluviosa.

Primera foto; lluvia cae en un camino que baja de la carretera hacia la presa en Upper Campbell Lake. Con la invasora retama negra.

Segunda foto; nubes traen agua, que no ha llegado todavía. Con los colores apagados de estos dias de lluvia. Es el lago Echo, a media tarde.

Un post para Skywatch; haz clic para encontrar cielos alrededor del mundo.

So green

It's raining again. As usual. The sky is grey, the ocean is grey, the distant mountains are grey. But the lichens! Oh, the lichens!

Lungwort, Lobaria pulmonaria, after the rain.

These leafy lichens are pale, bluish green, fading to dark brown in the summer heat. But give them a good bath, and they quickly turn this bright, saturated green.

The underside of the thalli (leaf-like structures) is brown with whitish patches. On lichens over 25 years old, tiny reproductive structures form on the surface of the thalli, like little discs or powdery spots. A few are visible on the edges of some thalli in the photo.

The lichen is common throughout our low-lying coastal forests, growing mainly on trees, sometimes on rocks. 

Tree trunk in party dress. Miracle Beach forest.

Long, long ago, we were taught that a lichen is a symbiotic organism consisting of a fungus living with a green alga. That was amazing enough, but in recent years, we've learned that it's a three-kingdom arrangement; a fungus, from the Fungi kingdom, a green alga (Protista kingdom), and a cyanobacteria (Eubacteria kingdom). The mind boggles.

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Está lloviendo otra vez. Como siempre. El cielo es gris, el mar es gris, las montañas distantes son grises. ¡Pero estos líquenes! ¡Ah, estos líquenes!

Fotos: líquen Lobaria pulmonaria, en una rama, y vistiendo el tronco de un árbol, acompañado de musgos.

Estos líquenes foliosos son de un color verde pálido, volviéndose color café oscuro en el calor del verano. Pero llega la lluvia, y de inmediato se vuelven de este color verde brillante. La parte inferior de los talos (como hojas) es café con manchas blancas.

En las pulmonarias de la edad de 25 años o más, se forman pequeñas estructuras reproductivas, como círculos o polvo en el talo. Se pueden ver algunas de estas en la primera foto.

La pulmonaria se encuentra comunmente creciendo sobre árboles en nuestros bosques húmedos en tierras costeras.

Hace muchos, muchos años, nos decían que los líquenes eran una combinación en simbiosis de dos organismos: un hongo, y un alga verde. Algo asombroso para contemplar. Pero recientemente, hemos aprendido que consiste en una relación de tres reinos: un hongo, del reino Fungi, un alga verde, del reino Protista, y un cianobacteria, del reino Eubacteria. ¡Increíble!

A walk in the dark

 I've been on the move a lot this week. Under a blazing sun, I returned to the wharf to look at critters under the floats. I went to see cliff faces beside Upper Campbell Lake below cotton-puff clouds. And in the pouring rain, I drove north to Hoomak Lake, and walked down sodden trails under dripping, gloomy trees.

I've been sorting and processing photos in no particular order, as the whim strikes. These are from the Hoomak Lake trails.

(I've been here before, in January of 2019. Posts here, here, here, here, and here.)

It stopped raining as I parked, but the sky was grey, the ground slippery, and raindrops, delayed by the branches overhead, gathered and dropped, making plopping noises.

First viewpoint over the lake. Rainy day lighting. 4:30 PM.

It was dark under the trees; the only light came from far, far overhead, through the leafy, needled canopy, or from narrow gaps in the vegetation along the shore. But where there was light, it was all very green.

Creek near the shore. Brown, rusty water.

The trails branch off; last time I took the "Short Trail". This time, I went down the long trail until I found another leg, going uphill and back. Longer than the short trail, but quite a bit shorter than the other.

Part way up the hill, I came across this sign:

The sign as I found it. With the lighting as the camera saw it. Facing the "lighter" part of the forest and the shore beyond.

I straightened the photo and cleaned it up a bit to make it easier to read. And this is the lighting as the automatic photoshop program thought it should be. Not how I saw it on site.

"Forest Vegetation" sign

Text: Forest Vegetaion:

While it may seem quite light in the forest around you, (because our eyes adjust) part of this forest is actually too dark for many plants to live in. Notice the densely vegetated area ahead of you. When trees die, fall down or are cut down, they create openings that let in more sunlight and allow more vegetation to grow. The area behind you (no photo) contains very little vegetation by comparison. This is because tree crowns and branches are blocking out a large amount of sunlight. As a result, few plants are able to survive in this darker environment.

And of course, it was much darker this afternoon, because of the clouds overhead.

These little cardboard signs have been added since I was here last. Most are nailed to trees. This one had fallen, and ended up propped soggily in a rotting stump.

This trail went uphill, back down, back up, across several bridges and many informative signs, and finally joined the old Short Trail and went back to the parking lot. I'll post bridge photos tomorrow, some plants next.

Looking straight up from the hillside.

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Esta semana he estado en muchas partes. Bajo un sol abrasador, fui otra vez al muelle para mirar las criaturas que viven bajo los flotadores. Fui a ver las grandes rocas que bordean el Lago Upper Campbell, bajo un cielo de nubes de algodón. Y fui al norte, al Lago Hoomak en una tormenta de lluvia, llegando al estacionamiento justo a tiempo para caminar en una pausa de la lluvia.

He visitado este lago anteriormente, en enero del año pasado. Arriba hay enlaces a lo que escribí entonces.

Era una tarde muy oscura, sobre todo bajo los árboles. Árboles mojados, todavía dejando caer grandes gotas de la lluvia retenida. El suelo estaba empapado y algo resbaloso. La única luz venía de muy arriba, o entre ramas, del lago.

Hay muchos senderos aquí. La última vez tomé el "Corto". Esta vez empecé en el sendero "Largo", pero luego vi otro que subía el cerro y lo seguí.

Encontré un letrero que habla de la oscuridad del bosque y sus resultados.

Cuando no hay suficiente luz, hay poca vegetación. Los árboles aquí, muy cerca el uno del otro, corta la luz. Hacia el lago, hay más plantas; en el cerro, pocas plantas pueden vivir.

El caminito subía y bajaba y volvía a subir. Cruzó un puente tras otro; hay muchos pequeños riachuelos en este bosque lluvioso. Mañana subiré fotos de puentes, y luego algunas plantas interesantes que hallé.

The Buttle Lake road

I had a free afternoon, so I drove out to Buttle Lake, just exploring. It's a long lake, 23 kilometres long, 1.5 across; more like a slow, wide river than a lake. A narrow road winds down the west side; it only connects to the highway on one end. I usually sail right past the entrance, on my way to Gold River. This time, I drove on in.

Buttle Lake runs down the centre of the Island, halfway between Campbell River and Gold River (the towns, not the rivers).

I had to keep stopping to look at the view and to poke around rock faces, so I only made it two thirds of the way down the west side of the lake before it was time to turn back. Even so, I saw many places that I must return to, with more time available; trail heads, shore access, mossy rocks, waterfalls. And at the end of the road, on this west bank, there's a mine site to visit and then Myra Falls. I'll be back.

At my last stop, Auger Point, I followed a short trail down to the shore, then poked through the bush, looking at mushrooms. (Photos, next post.)

BC's bush is challenging, at best. Here's a photo from Auger Point, taken from the trail, as shot, uncropped, with only a bit of sharpening added.

18 mushrooms, yellow, white, beige. That I can see from here. There will be more under and behind everything.

No name creek

Flowing into a no-name lake.

Tumbling down from the bank above the road,

pouring under the road, and winding down to the lake.

Scenes in a rainforest. A rainforest built on ancient piles of rock, mostly vertical. Everywhere we go, there's running water, trickling over cliff faces, oozing through the moss, scouring the boulders. Racing, pouring, seeping, falling, tunnelling. A constant undertone to the voice of the forest, the murmuring of the leaves, the scraping of branches.

On any road, like this one, the drop down to Brown's Bay from the highway, I pass dozens of little creeks bursting out into the open where the road made a gash in the forest. This one falls into the end of a tiny lake with no name on the map; just another of the puddles that dot the island.

From the other end of the lake, a darker line on the satellite view on Google Maps meanders down the hill to Brown's Bay, then disappears. Underground, under the man-made roads and parking lots, evidently, because then the creek appears on the beach, flowing into the salt chuck, where they all end up.

Rainforest hideaway

There's always a pond ...

With glowing mushrooms. And invisible (to the camera) damselflies.

At the end of an unused driveway. It was late afternoon and the shadows were long; damselflies darted in and out of the shade, creating brief flashes of blue light.

Wild forest floor

I grew up on Vancouver Island, in the northwest coastal forests, dense, lush, and silent, only marginally tamed along the edges. Across a creek that ran under my bedroom, a creek we crossed on a fallen tree, crawling (me) or dancing (my brothers) according to our sense of balance and scorn of danger, and through a hollow log that traversed a salmonberry thicket, we came out onto a fern- and moss-blanketed cathedral: unlogged Douglas firs, yards across at the base, towering high into the rainy clouds overhead. My brothers would race on through; I tended to find a dryish log and sit there a while, just listening.

On the Ridge Trail, I followed a sort of trail off the main trail; a deer track, maybe, looking for mushrooms. There were none visible, and I didn't want to disturb the moss, but stepping carefully around mossy roots and huge ferns, I got a brief flashback to my childhood wanderings. This was the forest floor I knew of old.

Healthy forest, mixed evergreen and deciduous, probably third-growth, after two or more loggings.

The trees on the ground are as essential to the health of the forest as the standing timber; they provide nutrients and shelter to new growth and the animals that make it their home. The moss on top soaks up the rain, releasing the moisture slowly to the thin layer of soil underneath; these forests sit on rock, sometimes barely under the surface duff. Without the moss, they would dry and burn with the first lightning stroke.

Evergreen fern.

It's not an ecosystem hospitable to humans, my brothers notwithstanding; any human trails are made with chain saws, constant monitoring, frequent traffic. Abandoned for a year or two, they disappear.

Sometimes I wonder at the early explorers who made their slow way across the continent, following ridges like this one, rivers like the one in the valley below, clambering at every step over slippery logs, stumbling into hidden holes, sinking through wood that seemed solid and turned out to be mostly wet rot, trying to find a dry, flattish spot to sleep after an exhausting day. Or at today's firefighters; at least they have helicopters and chain saws, but it's still a daunting task.

Much of Vancouver Island is logged off now, sometimes repeatedly. Entire mountain sides lie open to the sun and wind, the moss dry and brittle, the ferns dying. With the added burden of a warming climate, they are a bonfire waiting for the first match. I'm not looking forward to our next fire season.

Nursery

Life goes on ...

When a tree dies, it comes alive, more so than in its life.

Living trees are made up of about 5% living tissue, but when certain species die, they become literal garden beds of new life. These otherwise “dead” trees contain five times more living matter than when they were growing upright. (Garden Collage magazine)

And its useful life can extend as long as its "live" growth period. A 100-year-old tree dies; then it invites in a host of other organisms, and stands or lies there for another 100 years, gradually disintegrating. By the time it finally disappears, it may have nurtured a small forest of its own.

In any old stand of trees in our rainforest, we find nurse logs in different stages of decay and re-incarnation.

An old forest giant. I estimated it from a distance at about 2 - 3 metres diameter. Our Douglas firs have been known to reach up to 15 feet across.

This old stump supports several small trees, maple and fir, growing from the top, plus a few huckleberry bushes and a layer of moss. On its flanks, ferns, red-berry elder and salal have taken root, as well as the ever-present moss. 

The old stump lifts seedlings above the undergrowth into the light and retains a more consistent level of moisture, winter and summer, than the forest floor. In deep forest, they may provide almost the only suitable habitat for huckleberry bushes, which need air and light.

Look to the right; there's another old nurse log, mostly gone by now; the tree grown out of it has extended its roots over the edge and down into the soil. They will support the new tree on stilts even when the nurse has disappeared.

Another, much smaller, second- or third-growth stump supports three new trees. Their roots encase the old stump, by now too fragile to hold the weight on its own. Other residents: moss and a large colony of spiders.

Three more firs on a badly-decayed nurse log. The one in back is just getting started, with its top dressing of moss, where seeds will find the perfect planting bed, warm, moist, and sunlit.

Sun lover

Here in the Pacific rainforest, most of our native plants like wet feet, shade, and plenty of rain. In this dry, hot, too bright summer, many of them are already shedding their leaves, turning brown, looking baked. One, though, loves the light and the heat; fireweed.

Left to right, green seed pods, flowers, buds. As long as the sun shines, fireweed will keep on going.

Fireweed loves logging slash, scraped roadsides, vacant lots, leftover construction debris, and, especially, the blackened remains of last year's forest fires. These were growing along an abandoned gravel track across a wide clearing behind the beaver pond. Background vegetation is mostly red alder and hardhack, both colonizers of recently cleared land.

A pioneer species, Fireweed appears wherever the earth has been scraped, or especially burned, leaving exposed soil and an open canopy letting in lots of light. Its rhizomes can extend to about 45 cm. deep, knitting and holding the soil, preventing erosion while other more slowly growing vegetation can become established. The rhizomes are so tenacious they often survive forest fires.(The Nature of the Hills)

The seeds can lay dormant in the soil for years, and spring into life after a good burn clears away the shade plants. For a few years, the fireweed ties down the soil, and provides shade for the replacement seedlings, the trees and forest shrubs that will form the next rainforest. Once the trees rise above the fireweed, it dies; it doesn't appreciate the shade. But it leaves its seeds behind, (80,000 per plant - Wikipedia) waiting for the next fire.

Delicate flowers. I never realized before that the pollen is pale blue.

The remains of winter

The rain stopped. My forsythia burst into bloom. The hyacinth buds are fat and purple. I headed out of town, looking for the first wildflowers of the year, the skunk cabbages.

I passed a field of them; too soggy to walk there yet. I drove on, delighting in the earliest of the new leaves; green fairy lights along the stems of the salmonberry shrubs, inch-high green fountains on the tops of the elderberry stalks.

And then I thought; it's been a difficult, grumpy winter. I was shut in for a while with an injured back, and then too tired to celebrate the cold weather. And here comes the spring already, and I've missed out on the beauties of our brown and grey back country sleepy season.

I pulled over in a nondescript spot on an empty road, grabbed the camera and went to find the remains of winter.

Morton Lake road. Slow going. Logging trucks use this road, pounding through the potholes, digging them deeper. I followed a camper, watching it tip from side to side as it maneuvered through and around the holes.

Light and reflections in the potholes.

The BC rainforest "bush", as we call it, is a messy, knotty, booby-trapped, ankle-snapping, wet jungle; fallen trees on top of fallen trees, intertwined with ferns and salmonberry canes, thorny, tough blackberry vines, murderous Devil's Club, dead sticks, rotting stumps and new red alder and evergreen trees, all smothered under a slippery blanket of moss. In the summer, all this is covered with a froth of green leaves; prettier, but deceptive.

The low afternoon sun highlights every tree, shining through the moss.

Mossy giant, caught in the open.

If I could get to the base of one of these monsters without a chain saw and ropes, I would probably find the moss (several inches thick) and the bark underneath teeming with life; assorted beetles and grubs, fungal threads, predators like millipedes and spiders. From the side of the road, I noticed the licorice ferns (about two thirds of the way down); these send their long rhizomes down the stem underneath the moss coverlet, and stay green all winter.

The tree may look static from a distance, but it is already covered with white flower buds. Here's a mid-section.

Wide spot in a creek, as it slows to run under the road. A pair of ducks were dabbling in the muck when I arrived, but they quickly hurried around the bend.

Standing water on the far side. With glowing moss sporangia. Dead, rotting leaves, next summer's compost, underwater. And is that a pop can? Shame!

Evergreen ferns and last year's leaves.

Just moss on a log.

Dead leaves and alder catkins by the side of the road.

I found my skunk cabbage. And fresh red alder catkins. Coming right up!