A journey to old growth

This past weekend we headed to Wilappa NWR to visit a 300-acre patch of forest, in the center of a small island, that had never been cut. Amazingly, this small forest had been left untouched by the axes and saws that greedily timbered nearly all of this country's forests. The cedar trees here are estimated to be over 900 years old. That means that these trees were alive during the Crusades, the existence of the Anasazi Indians, and the decline of the Mayans. I'll stop writing now since I don't think words can accurately capture the primeval beauty of this forest, and pictures probably can't either...but I'll do my best.

Since the forest is located on an island we had to paddle our canoe to get there. This was Ada's first boat ride (well, technically second since we did a "test run" in our backyard pond earlier in the week). Once you reach the island it's a 2.5 mile hike in.

Some bigger trees...

A dwarf amongst the giants...

Some trees on the perimeter had been cut. This is one of the stumps that we came across (Zach's on top for scale) . I can't imagine what type of person could put a saw blade into a tree this old and big.