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.

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!

Pink ghosts

When I was a very small child living in Tahsis, some sixty-mumble years ago, our house was one of a dozen or so along the Tahsis river bank. In front of us, the road and the river; behind us, nothing but empty tide flats, then the bush. Impassible bush, all intertwined salmonberry and salal, rotting logs and slippery moss.

We went over that way in the canoe once, past the tide flats and up the mouth of another river. When the canoe kept getting stuck in the reeds, Mom insisted that we turn back. People said there were horses over there, and apple trees; I only half believed them. There were none in Tahsis.

Now, of course, there's a highway. And walking trails cut through the bush, winding along the banks of the Leiner River. Easy going, in most spots. Someone had been through just ahead of us, hacking down the everlasting salmonberry canes; they can erase a trail in a few months.

But off the trail, the bush is still the same; tangly, dense, interlocked berry bushes; salmonberry, huckleberry, salal, thimbleberry. Where there's a bit of space, the evergreen ferns take over.

Under this mess of branches and leaves, we found several clumps of Indian pipe plants. Where I could scramble or climb close enough, I took photos.

Indian pipe plant, Monotropa uniflora, aka ghost plant, corpse plant. About 6 to 8 inches tall.

These plants, like the gnome plant, are parasites on fungi that in turn, parasitize trees. They have no chlorophyll, which makes other plants green. Usually they are white, with hints of black or pink. A few may be red.

These are more pinkish.

Flower heads. Each stalk bears one flower only. The flowers hang down at first, then stand upright once they are pollinated and are making seeds.

We passed a few plants that had been broken by the trail maker; they had quickly turned black.

In an abandoned clearing, I found an old apple tree. I didn't see any horses.

The Leiner River trail is just west of our campsite.