The roar drops off and the trees get taller, into the kind of forest that takes five hundred years to make. Towering Douglas fir and western hemlock rise alongside shaggy, fragrant red cedar, some of these firs standing before any wagon crossed the plains, their first branches higher than a four-story building. But the bigleaf maples steal the show: limbs draped in moss so thick they look upholstered, with whole hanging gardens of licorice fern growing right out of the air, the maple sending roots up into its own mossy shoulders to drink. Then look low for the nurse log, a fallen giant gone soft as a sponge, young trees lined up along its spine in a perfect row. This stop reveals a forest where nothing gets wasted and the biggest tree in the stretch is the one lying down, still working, handing the forest up to the trees that will outlive us.
Slow your feet a second and look up. The roar has dropped off here, the trail leveling between falls, and you're walking through the kind of forest that takes five hundred years to make. Those towering columns are Douglas fir and western hemlock; the shaggy, fragrant ones are red cedar. Some of these firs went up before any wagon crossed the plains — bark grooved deep as your hand, the first branch higher than a four-story building, the crown lost somewhere up in the gray. But it's the bigleaf maples that steal it. Limbs draped in green moss so thick they look upholstered, and growing right out of that moss, hanging in the air, little clusters of licorice fern. Whole gardens living on a branch, never touching the ground. The trick is the moss itself: it mats up year after year until it cradles a kind of soil in the crook of every limb, and the maple answers by sending roots up out of its own bark to drink from its own shoulders. A tree feeding off the garden growing on top of it. Now look low. See that long mound, fuzzed with seedlings and saplings in a perfect row? That was a fallen giant once. A nurse log — the old trunk gone soft, holding water like a sponge, the young trees lined up along its spine to drink. Nothing here gets wasted. The biggest tree in this stretch is the one lying down, and it's still working — handing the forest up to the trees that will outlive us all.
