A Few Favourite Tree Friends

This ancient cedar is on one of my favourite bike rides along the Sooke River. These
trees are hard to age, but this one could be pushing 1000.

We initially moved to the rainforest from the city to be surrounded by wilderness, to experience a landscape and everything living in it more than we ever had before. We gave ourselves time to explore and followed every little whim.

Because of this mandate we have made friends with a lot of trees.

Here are a few of the gentle giants that we have had the privilege of visiting.

This large Douglas-fir is in Devonian Park, Metchosin. There are a few older trees here, and
access to the beach and ocean below.

This is the largest tree I have stood next to in my nine years of tramping through the forest
searching for the big ones. Western red cedar like this one could live for thousands of years.
Yes, thousands.

This old growth Sitka spruce is on a trail leading to China Beach. All along the coast the
last holdouts of the primeval 10,000 year old forest hang on… for now.

BC Wood Makes Beautiful Music

This Yamaha guitar has an old growth sitka spruce solid wood soundboard.
B.C. wood is in 80% of the world’s solid wood guitar soundboards. 

British Columbia's old growth forests are the number one go-to wood lot of choice for local and international guitar makers alike.

"Abbotsford-based David Lapeyrouse of Timbre Tonewood, who supplies wood to guitar makers, estimates there are 10,000 guitar builders in North America, 1,000 in Canada and a disproportionate 500 or more in B.C. At one point, back in 1999, Lapeyrouse had a quarter of the global market in solid wood soundboards, the vital resonating top face of a guitar. 

Why is B.C. such a hot spot for luthiers and instrument-grade wood? Three reasons -

1. Jean Larrivée of Larrivée guitars,
2. artisan Michael Dunn, and
3. B.C.’s old growth forests.

 The growing number of aging boomers doesn’t hurt either. 

Classical guitar with birdseye maple side and back, and cedar soundboard.

B.C. wood is in 80 per cent of the world’s solid wood soundboards, Lapeyrouse said. The remaining guitars are plywood topped — and most of those are surfaced with B.C. wood. 

B.C. is world-renowned for its old growth Engelmann and Sitka spruce and red cedar “tone wood.” Luthiers (artisans who make stringed instruments) covet the straight, fine grain found in old forests where trees compete for light and grow slowly. The wood must be carefully lined up along two dimensions for cutting. 

“The tonal quality is based on whether it’s cut right so it captures the wood’s natural strength,” Lapeyrouse said. Cut it wrong and you get a thud instead of a musical ting when you tap the wood. 

Of nine million guitars built globally each year, 2.5 million have solid wood tops, with two million come from B.C. at about $15 million wholesale, Lapeyrouse said. Most of the wood is shipped to Taiwan, Korea and China."

This department store special is made of plywood. While it has its
merits, superb tonal quality is not one of them.

It is important to harvest valuable old growth sustainably so we can continue to have access to high grade instrument-quality wood.

Decisions we make now will affect musicians and instrument makers for centuries to come.

Read more about BC guitars and guitar makers here. 

It's Time To Pay Our Debt To Trees

It is time to pay our debt… with interest.
Photo: TJ Watt

Many researchers believe that if it weren't for the amazing versatility of wood, civilization as we know it would never have developed.

"Wood is humanity's oldest natural resource. We have no older or deeper debt."

- Hugh Johnson, author of The World of Trees

It is time to show our gratitude and respect for our global tree community, and pay our debts... with interest. 

If that is even possible, considering tree's immense contribution to our well-being since the dawn of humanity.

I suggest that we at least try before it is too late.

Witty Beach Road Trail Closure

Two large Douglas-fir trees greet visitors to the parking lot at the end
of Witty Beach Road in Metchosin, BC.

Following the short, but scenic Witty Beach Road in the rural Vancouver Island community of Metchosin, takes you to a small parking lot by the ocean. For most people the beach is the destination, and a beautiful one it is, but there are other attractions.


While beach access from this spot has been restricted recently by a closed set of crumbling stairs, my favourite features remain - two large, old Douglas-fir that dominate the area.

Witty Beach can still be accessed via the main parking lot
 at Witty's Lagoon Regional Park.

Access stairs in better times. The steep slope they were
anchored on is unstable.

There are not many big Douglas-fir left, let alone ones you
can drive right up to like these.

Officials are uncertain as to when the beach access at Witty Beach Road will reopen. For the time being it is worth a drive to visit the trees before going to the main parking lot down the road to access the beach.

BC Liberals: Public Parks Are Open For Private Exploitation

Will industrial development be coming to a park near you?
How about in Cathedral Grove?

In the news for a while was more evidence that nothing is officially sacred any more. Everything public is being privatized, and now that includes BC's park system.

Here we thought that our hard-fought battles were to preserve special places for future generations. Now we can see that we were just preserving special places for future corporate exploitation.

How much do they want of our public land? All of it - 100%.

And they will get it (including the 12% of land designated as provincial parks in BC) if we don't raise our voices and tell them to keep their hands off our sacred trust.


The following is from Bill 4 Passes: B.C. Parks Now Officially Open…To Pipelines and Drilling:

March 25, 2014

A little-known Bill, the Park Amendment Act, that will drastically alter the management of B.C. parks is set to become law today, creating controversy among the province’s most prominent environmental and conservation organizations. 

The passage of Bill 4 will make way for industrial incursions into provincial parklands including energy extraction, construction of pipelines and industry-led research. 

The Bill, quietly introduced in mid-February, has already met significant resistance in B.C. where the Minister of Environment received “thousands of letters” of opposition, according to Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Peter Wood. 

“There has been absolutely zero public consultation, and the pace at which this was pushed through suggests this was never a consideration,” he said in a press release. 

“This Bill undermines the very definition of what a ‘park’ is,” Gwen Barlee from the Wilderness Committee said in the same statement, “given that our protected areas will now be open to industrial activity.” 

“This is a black day for B.C. Parks – the provincial government is ensuring that none of our parks are now safe from industrial development,” she said. 

According to staff lawyer Andrew Gage with the West Coast Environmental Law the bill is “difficult to square” with the sentiments underlying the B.C. Parks Service, which claims provincial parks and conservancies are a “public trust” for the “protection of natural environments for the inspiration, use and enjoyment of the public.”

See a list of the provincial parks at risk here. 

Canada's 2nd Biggest Douglas-fir Tree Identified in Recent Clear Cut

Big Lonely Doug, the second largest known Douglas-fir tree in Canada.
Photo by TJ Watt

The second largest known Douglas-fir tree in Canada was recently discovered by big tree defenders on Vancouver Island. Named "Big Lonely Doug" by the Ancient Forest Alliance members that found it, this magnificent tree has been left stranded in the middle of a 2012 clear cut by forest liquidators Teal-Jones.

But don't be distressed by the sad scenes depicted in TJ Watt's amazing photos of this notable tree that had a close brush with death in 2012, or its surroundings. Teal-Jones, the logging company that share the responsibility for this tragic mess with negligent MLAs in the BC Liberal Party, assure us on their website that

"There is virtually no waste in manufacturing wood products".

Thank goodness people like those at Ancient Forest Alliance are out doing the work in the woods to try and stop the waste, not to mention the extinction of the primal forests that remain on Vancouver Island.

If you want to help them help us, please consider donating to this worthy organization of hard-working big tree campaigners.

12 meters (39 feet) in circumference or 4 meters (13 feet) in diameter, and 69 meters(226 feet) tall.
Photo by TJ Watt

The following information is from the AFA Facebook page:

Port Renfrew - Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance have found and measured what appears to be Canada’s second largest recorded Douglas-fir tree, nick-named “Big Lonely Doug”, standing by itself in an area clearcut in 2012. 

Preliminary measurements of the tree taken yesterday found it to be about 12 meters (39 feet) in circumference or 4 meters (13 feet) in diameter, and 69 meters(226 feet) tall. Big Lonely Doug is estimated to be about 1000 years old, judging by nearby 8 feet wide Douglas-fir stumps in the same clearcut with growth rings of 500-600 years. 

Big Lonely Doug’s total size comes in just behind the current champion Douglas-fir, the Red Creek Fir, the world’s largest, which grows just one valley over. 

Big Lonely Doug grows in the Gordon River Valley near the coastal town of Port Renfrew on southern Vancouver Island, known as the “Tall Trees Capital” of Canada. It stands on Crown lands in Tree Farm Licence 46 held by the logging company Teal-Jones, in the unceded traditional territory of the Pacheedaht First Nation band. 

The fact that all of the surrounding old-growth trees have been clearcut around such a globally exceptional tree, putting it at risk of being damaged or blown down by wind storms, underscores the urgency for new provincial laws to protect BC’s largest trees, monumental groves, and endangered old-growth ecosystems. 

The days of colossal trees like these are quickly coming to an end as the timber industry cherry-picks the last unprotected, valley-bottom, lower elevation ancient stands in southern BC where giants like this grow.

It will take a thousand years or more to replace this clear cut old growth forest.
Photo by TJ Watt

Vancouver Observer - Canada's 2nd Largest Douglas-fir Found: "The vast majority of BC's remaining old-growth forests are at higher elevations, on rocky sites, and in bogs where the trees are much smaller and in many cases have low to no commercial value. 

It's the valley-bottom, low elevation stands where trees like the Big Lonely Doug grow that are incredibly scarce now. 99 per cent of the old-growth Douglas-fir trees on BC's coast have already been logged. 

It's time for the BC government to stop being more enthusiastic about big stumps than big trees, and for them to enact forest policies that protect our last endangered ancient forest ecosystems." 

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/canadas-second-largest-douglas-fir-discovered

While trees are a renewable resource, with current logging practices and regulations,
 forests older than about 80 years are not. 
Photo by TJ Watt

"...while trees are harvested the effects are only short term as reforestation follows."

- from the Teal-Jones logging company website, that fails to realize that the destruction of thousand year old trees is not a "short term effect".

Witness to the on-going destruction of our ancient forests, with Canada's
 second largest known Douglas-fir in the background. What a magnificent, lonely tree…
Photo by TJ Watt

Beginner Bracket Fungus

I was fascinated by these fungal forms on a recent hike. It looks like the start of bracket fungus.

Yes, the big trees in the rainforest are of truly epic proportions. But just as fascinating are the smaller things that live among (and on) the giants. The varieties of fungal life in the forest provides an example of smaller life forms that make this ecosystem work.

Bracket fungus, or shelf fungus as it is also known, is a common sight in the Pacific rainforest.

Here the smears of fungus are developing the bracket seen in the more mature form.

Bracket fungus can be found on standing and fallen trees. If the tree is not already dead, bracket fungus can get so large as to kill the tree.

I have seen large specimens, but have never noticed small ones, or noticed how they start out.

Several small bracket fungus hiding in the moss growing on a dead red alder.

Fungus and other decomposers are important parts of the nutrient cycle in the rain forest, and act as Nature's recyclers. If they couldn't do their job (as is happening around the Chernobyl NPP), the system would cease to function properly.

Snow In The Rainforest

No snow at sea level, but accumulations at elevation in the Sooke Hills.

A bit on the ground at Sooke Potholes Park, but not enough for
skiing or snowshoeing.

Heavier snow in the trees on the hilltops.

Conditions are good for revealing individual big trees on the hillside that normally
 blend into the forest and are harder to spot.

The falls on Sooke River are highlighted by a dusting of snow.

Studying Orange Jelly Fungus

I photographed this bizarre looking life form recently and wanted to identify what it is, and what planet it comes from. Some light studying leads me to believe it is Orange Jelly Fungus (Dacrymyces palmatus).

This edible but tasteless orangey-yellow glistening growth was living on a fallen Douglas-fir, doing its job to slowly break it down. Decomposers perform an important function as nature's recyclers.

Decomposers, or saprotrophs, recycle dead plants and animals into chemical nutrients like carbon and nitrogen that are released back into the soil, air and water.

I can see someone perhaps giving this amazing growth a little poke with a finger or stick, but it boggles the mind to think of eating it. 

Unless you have bought your mushrooms in the grocery store you should proceed with extreme caution.

Whether they look like day-glo boogers or not.

Lessons In The DeMamiel Creek Forest

The DeMamiel Creek forest is mostly second growth with old growth trees in places.
It is in the Coastal Douglas fir ecozone, and is comprised mostly of private land.

The primal forest is the best school one is likely to find. Too bad so many people are skipping class, including those who are supposed to be responsible for protecting this precious resource.


The students that do take the time to learn the lessons of the forest discover everything they need to know about successful living on this planet. Trees provide places we can experience the richness of life. Here we can learn the lessons of gentle living and cooperation.


Notable teachers across the ages have acted as our guides, sharing with us their insights gained from developing a relationship with the trees.

A fungal community growing on a moss community growing in a tree community. Things proceed peacefully - there are no wars... until we show up with our scorched earth assaults and clear everything in sight.

Pete Seeger loved being on the stage, but found respite in the forest. He said, "Every time I'm in the woods, I feel like I'm in church."


But churches pale in comparison to sunlight filtering through a grove of centuries old Western red cedar or Douglas fir on a misty day. The great cathedrals of the world were built to emulate such groves of towering trees, which are the original places of worship.

This is the original place of learning and worship - everyone is welcomed here.

The forest wilderness is where John Muir went to discover the clearest way into the Universe. His prescription for all of us urban types was to occasionally spend a week in the woods to "wash the spirit clean".

DeMamiel Creek supports several species of salmon. The trees and fish have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Henry David Thoreau lived in the woods to learn what they had to teach. He found the trees and the things that lived with them to be a source of beauty, harmony, and perfection in cooperation.


Thoreau learned that in the woods everything does its part with thrift and equality, and he pondered the folly of not doing the same in the human world.

DeMamiel forest is accessible from the adjacent Sunriver neighbourhood.

Indian activist Vandana Shiva started her eco-education in the 1970s women-led Chipko movement. These are the original tree huggers - Chipko means "to hug or embrace". The women were so dedicated to their communities' Himalayan forests that they wrapped themselves around the trees to protect them from loggers saws.


After repeated walks among the beautiful oaks and rhododendrons, Shiva learned that "the forest teaches us enoughness: as a principle of equity, how to enjoy the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation."


By 1980 the Chipko movement scored a major victory for forests and the people when the Indian government imposed a 15 year ban on logging in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Similar logging bans spread to other states as communities took back forest resources for the benefit of the people living there.

Everything does its part, and each part
is as important as any other.

No species other than humans takes more than its fair share. In the forest there is no consumerism, no greed, and no accumulation for personal aggrandizement. There is the freedom to be and participate as a necessary and integral part of something larger to which we are all connected.


It is vital that we adopt the wisdom of the woods, and soon. Instead of clear cutting the last ancient forests to the ground, we should be studying and emulating them.


When we begin to learn their lessons we will begin to live in harmony with our environment, and with each other.