Giant Trees

Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, Red Spruce, Western Hemlock: these are the giants gracing the Temperate Rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula. We just don’t have trees of this towering grandeur back East. Camping many nights among them, I feel deeply moved by their stately and powerful magnificence. It is a magical feeling walking through a forest of massive trunks, textured and moss covered, by the moon light [generally on a nightly trip to the restroom]. Luck for us, it hasn’t been raining much during our sojourn in the rainforest. Will often sleeps solo in the tent. The clear weather means he can abandon the rain fly and can gaze up, though mosquito netting, at the grand columns of forest into the night sky. I hope that he is etching a memory of these amazing trees forever in his mind. Our tree gazing will soon be stepped up a notch as we head to the Redwood forests of northern California. All the while, I’m having great fun reading “Wild Trees,” a wonderful book about people who climb giant trees, passed on to me in Anchorage by Ellin London. Thanks, Ellin!