June 5, 2023

A Wild Place

I know a place where trees die of old age, crash to the ground and give their nutrients back to the next generation. A place where rain filters through the soil, down from the ridges into countless streams – which merge, and merge again, until they are powerful enough to cut through bedrock. Where the only trails are those made over hundreds of years by the denizens of the forest. Time passes slowly here.

It had been eight years since my last visit to this magical place. It is just as I left it, as if I pressed pause and it has been waiting for my return. But the wind never stopped carrying the water from the ocean and the creek never stopped flowing. The trees grew an imperceptible amount. Most of the creatures who called this place home eight years ago are dead. Their kin maintain the trails now.

This place has no designation for protection, but it is mostly safe considering that we humans have moved on from logging old growth – for now. There are many people who would love to see it reduced to stumps. Not so that they could visit and actually see the stumps, but so that a few people would have work for a month, some corporation could show a quarterly profit, and cedar pickets could be bought at the hardware store and turned into fences.

This forest will likely not last forever, but I am glad it exists today.