A Walk in an Ancient Forest

I stumbled upon a grove of old-growth forest some years ago while wandering around in the Bonnington Range, and I always wanted to return and spend some more time there. I finally made it back for another look just the other day.

Thanks to a newer logging road, it’s now just a twenty minute bushwhack down into a steep gully to get to the small stream that marks the border of this little ten-hectare island of old trees nestled in a sea of younger, second growth stands of timber.

While this general area has been logged extensively over the decades, none of the cutblocks extend to the edge of this shady oasis (as yet, anyway) because the timber in the immediate surroundings is still too young to warrant logging. This suggests that one or more wildfires within the past century burned the adjacent slopes but died out when they reached the moister conditions in this old forest.

How long has this forest been here, I wonder? The giant western redcedar and western hemlock that predominate here are certainly several hundred years old, but the forest itself? How long did it take, once this mountainside was finally free of ice some ten or twelve millennia ago, for vegetation to return, creeping outward from an ice-free pocket somewhere, beginning with lichens, grasses, sedges and shrubs, until the first tree finally arrived - a seed dropped, perhaps, by a passing bird or animal? Which of the many possible species was it? How long did it take for this climax forest of cedar and hemlock to become established at last? A millennium or two, I’d venture.

Now, this shadowy realm is a refuge for denizens large and small. Watching a pair of Pacific wrens flitting about in the tangle of fallen trees and devil’s club was a special treat.

From the perspective of anyone who has had to walk or work among it, devil’s club is certainly deserving of both its common name and its scientific name: Oplopanax horridus. Fortunately, there were enough gaps to allow me to navigate a way through when I needed to.

Plants here are generally shade-tolerant, and many are now bearing fruit, including clasping twisted stalk and small twisted stalk, a much rarer species that loves moist forests such as this.

Queen’s cup, whose delicate white stars graced the forest floor in May and June, is now sporting a single, deep blue berry that is, apparently, a favorite food of ruffed grouse but is inedible and toxic to humans.

Along the small stream, interspersed with the devil’s club and its clusters of bright red fruit, are oval leaved blueberries. The berries are not as sweet as those of black huckleberry, but tasty nonetheless.

When a tree falls in this forest, I suspect that it does make a sound, but it also creates an opening into which the seeds from the surrounding trees fall, and, in the new clearing, they receive enough light to grow and prosper. In a century or two, one of the hemlock seedlings growing on this decomposing body of one of its ancestors will have outcompeted the others and reached maturity, thereby helping to keep the dream of this forest alive.

The rough, furrowed bark of the larger hemlock trees provided foraging grounds for a couple of American three-toed woodpeckers (or possibly black-backed woodpeckers), whose quiet tap-tapping alerted me to their presence.

On the small terrace above the creek, the forest floor is home to a multitude of flora. Coralroot, one-sided wintergreen, trailing raspberry, rattlesnake plantain and the delicate oak fern are just a few of the plants that live here.

Despite our current drought conditions, the rich humus here retains sufficient moisture to support a variety of fungi.

I'm happy that I finally found my way back to this cool, shady forest. It's a sanctuary of sorts, and there's a stillness here that inspires a feeling of reverence and peace. As I returned, picking my careful path through the devil's club and deadfall, to the small stream that marks the transition back to a less magical place, I reflected on the many gifts the natural world has to offer, with deep gratitude, as always.

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