After beginning the journey on Huckleberry trail then going northward along Top and Vine Maple trails to connect with Lily of the Valley, (where the tornado left a devastated track of land), my journey in Pacific Spirit park continued westward through Heron then southward along Salish trail.
If you’re just out for a stroll in the woods, then you might miss a few things, but when you’re also photographing your surroundings, your attention is more focused. I began to notice how the forests changed even within short distances. Ferns grew more on one side than the other, for example, while others contained different types of trees and vegetation altogether.
The sign beside the fallen tree was correct. The destruction of the forest changes the variety of plants found there. Where an area used to be in shadows, it might become sunlit after a tree falls or burns and give new species a chance. A part of me recoils at any form of destruction happening, but with no destruction, there is no creation. What a conundrum!
The forest awakened my baser primate instincts. My senses were suddenly sharp, on alert, sniffing the air for clues, relying on some primitive sense of orientation, ready to stalk the wild lettuce. Every little sound was magnified in the silence like the odd call of a bird in the thicket. My field of vision narrowed, attuned to the subtleties of my surrounding.
I have a restless mind, and I racked my brain trying to identify the plants that I came across. Finally, I decided to use Google Lens to identify them. The app was surprisingly accurate though sometimes it would give me several results that were not clearcut. I decided to jot this information in my fancy state-of-the-art leather notebook. I also drew quick sketches of each specimen, which I later used to draft a document with the pertinent information and images. This added more time to the hike, but it definitely quenched my thirst to identify, organize, and categorize my surroundings.
The twists and turns in the trail disoriented me. I checked my paper map because my stubbornness wouldn't let me check Google maps. A man not asking for directions, how surprising! The trail names didn't make sense, so I stared at the map until something clicked in my head, and folding the map, I continue down the trail following my gut instinct.
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