Tip your head back. Keep tipping. That dark, ridged column going straight up past everything else is a Douglas-fir, and the biggest of them in this canyon have been standing since before Oregon was a state. Their cousins crowd in beside them — western hemlock, you can tell it by the soft, drooping tip at the very top, like the tree's a little tired; and western red cedar, the one with the stringy, reddish bark you could almost peel in ribbons. Down here the air does something to them. Cool, damp, sheltered from wind by the canyon walls, the South Fork keeping everything humid year-round. That's old-growth weather, and these trees love it.
Now look low, along the ground. See that long mound, mossed-over, with a row of young trees marching right along the top of it in a straight line? That was a fallen giant once. When one of these conifers finally comes down, it doesn't waste itself — it becomes a nurse log, a slow-rotting cradle, and a hemlock seed that lands on it gets a head start above the crowded floor. That tidy row of trunks is the shape of a tree that died a century ago, still feeding the forest that grew out of its back. Listen a second. Hear how quiet it gets under here? That hush is the bigness of them, soaking up every sound.
