Lost Groves

I have grown addicted to searching for lost groves of giant trees. My new obsession is sketched across my arms and legs in shredded flesh. Himalayan blackberries are my nemesis. Great walls of these thorny horrors block my passage into dark recesses of forest, where a few rogue giants have avoided the carnage of clear-cutting that has laid waste to the Coast Range. Shedding a little blood on blackberry brambles is a small price to pay to see the last of these living cathedrals.

I have felt wind gust through a gap in a western redcedar where a slab of this titanic tree rotted away. I have pulled neck muscles straining to see the tops of towering sitka spruce rising from river bottoms so fecund, I'm pretty sure these hidden places not only escaped saws of loggers but also escaped geologic change and are lost remnants of the Jurassic.

Bigfoot? I wouldn't be surprised to see a sauropod when I stumble through the sword ferns. Or so I imagine on my wanderings in the deep forest. But no matter how tall the trees or how far-ranging my musings, I force myself to look down to avoid crushing little critters like salamanders, beetles, and banana slugs.