On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Mike in Oly
More photos from our hike on Long Island, WA. Please see previous post for the full story.
There’s no scale here but they were towering over us.
Because this is a coastal forest most of the oldest trees were multi-limbed on their upper areas. The old leaders had broken off in wind storms and rebranched to continue upward.
This one had recently died off leaving its branches exposed to the sky.
The narrow path around the loop. So lush! Even tho we just came out of a very dry summer season the forest here stays moist from gathered fog dripping from the trees to water the forest. No danger of wildfires here.
So many shades of green.
If you look close you can see Skookum in the lower right. Even the undergrowth was taller than us. Anyone that has experienced the vast forests of Washington, and the rest of the west, knows very well what a laughable idea it is that TFG carries on about when he says we just need to clean up the dead wood and rake the forests to prevent wildfires. Anyone parroting this nonsense has no grasp of the sheer enormity of the lands and forests here, nor how a living ecosystem functions.
This was such a fun trip, even if it was challenging. The NWR staff were so great, keeping a positive attitude during adverse conditions, always ready with some informative facts and history of the area and lands, and being friendly, helpful and kind the entire day. We appreciated their service.
kalakal
Those trees are huge! What a magnificent forest. Thank you for posting this, you’ve added another spot to my bucket list 😀
mrmoshpotato
They provide their own scale.
“Look at us! We’re tall as fuck!”
eclare
That photo with Skookum, wow. Those forests are magnificent. Thank you for the photos.
JPL
Amazing!
Manyakitty
Refreshing–so lush.
pieceofpeace
What a gorgeous place, you can imagine feeling a calm state of mind when standing amongst all those giant trees and foliage. Thanks.
StringOnAStick
Moving to Oregon and the size of the trees here is why I feel truly at home here, and we’re on the dry side of the Cascades! We have the Olympics on our list for next hiking season, thank you for the photos.
I read a book by Paul Stamets, THE fungus/mushroom guy, and he points out that rather than burning the slash piles left from logging and wildfire fuel reduction efforts, they should be innoculated with the wood decomposing fungus and allow the carbon to return to the soil. He points out that forest growth is declining because we’ve taken so much carbon out of that cycle in the form of wood products, and those trees not rotting back into the soil is degrading the soil, so each subsequent cutting is from smaller and less productive forests. Makes perfect sense; how are trees supposed to take carbon from the soil and turn it into trees if we keep reducing the amount of carbon available because it’s been hauled off to make lumber? Forests can be huge carbon sinks but we need to get carbon back into the soil by letting it rot in place, and we can accelerate that with fungus that does that naturally. Burning slash piles just puts the carbon into the air, exactly where we don’t want it to go!
NetheadJay
@StringOnAStick: Which one of his books is this, if you remember? Big fan of Stamets.