10 Lingering Thoughts about Avatar Grove

Goat's Beard - (Aruncus doicus)

1. I never want to buy much at gift shops.

Usually I love the bags to buy if they are souvenirs of an exhibition I have seen.

So I wanted to stop at Port Renfrew and get something that would remind me of this trip.

Not seeing any souvenirs of Avatar Grove in the gift shop I was out of luck.

If there had been souvenirs, the area would be more highly developed and thus less of the wilderness destination that was this trip.

If I want a bag to remind me of this place, I will have to make it myself.

2. I did about 6,700 of my usual 10,000 steps that day.

However the greatest percentage of these steps were careful ones – up and down wet boardwalk, dodging roots on earthen paths, climbing or descending stairs and a few times going a few yards past the sign that says Trail End.

Pacheedaht Campground
The sky was clearer in the lake than in the sky
or so it seemed.

At the end of the day, I decided that those 6,000 steps will count as 12,000 to me, since they were so carefully taken.

3. Not everyone needs walking sticks. A pair of them are a godsend to me.

I watched a video on how to use them, even though I have been striding out with them for about 6 months now.

And in the ensuing days, I practised walking just as the video suggested, even carefully watching how I flicked my wrists with the poles so that they don’t trip people passing by, nor me if I get walking faster than the walking poles move.

Pacheedaht Campground
... more clouds in the lake ...

4. I read a review of a professional tourism writer who had also gone to the Avator Grove

This writer said that when some people call the area Port Rainfrew, they are not far off.

His days there had been filled with rain.

 

... birds on a floating log in Pacheedaht Campground ...

Our day was brilliantly sunny.

 I had the following question answered in the article.

Is there a service where a person could hire a guide to take them through the forest?

 Yes. $130 – I can see how every cent of this would be worthwhile.

Pacheedaht Campground

... logs reflected in the water ...

We had the family discount with our guide.

5. I wondered who had constructed the trail we were walking on.

I read the work was done by the youth of the Pacheedaht and T'Sou-ke First Nations. As I was walking the trail, enjoying its twists and its turns, I was thinking about the people who

 had been on their hands and knees, moving earth and making stairs, thinking pf how well they must know the plants and the trees that are in the grove.

... towering trees in Avatar Grove ...

6. I stood near the trail end, watching Glen go off into the forest, up a gully, striding over fallen logs, then out of sight, then back into view coming from behind a tree, bending down, then looking up.

I asked him afterward what was on his mind.

He said nothing specifically.

... signs to the upper and lower loops ...

He was just there to use his eyes and to think about everything he was seeing -- just information gathering but he didn’t know about what.

“Remember, I am a forest practises investigator and that is what I was doing.”

7. Glen talked about the Ancient Forest Alliance and their work to protect old forest growth.

I am probably going to their website to learn a little more.

... viewing platform ...
 ... 2 hikers and a dog below ...

8. Walking with an experienced forester who is willing to walk and talk about what he sees made the trip full of information I probably can’t get out of a book.

When I couldn’t see something, Glen would stop and point the feature out until I got it and now I will probably never forget it.

For example, “Those candelabra tops are a sign of ancient red cedars.”

Then he would stop and show me exactly what I should be looking at when he says “candelabra tops”. I started of thinking of how he could retire and just give personalized trips in the forest to make money. I don’t think there is a way, since the guided tours would have to be with so few people.

Janet, Glen and Arta checking out the undergrowth

There just isn’t room at any stop there for more than 4 people to be looking at the same thing without ruining the ecology of the wonderful site that has brought people there. No money to be made there.

9. We spent some time talking about practises of Truth and Reconciliation, how it has inflected the work Glen does.

He was thinking about the practise of inviting First Nations people along when he goes out with a group of people into the forest.

Rebecca and Glen had a long and interesting exchange about mutual obligations people who live side by side, have to each other.

... 3 of us standing at the foot of one tree ...
or
Where are Arta, Janet and Rebecca?

10. Some of the literature I read said that this forest has trees that are from 500 to 1,000 years old.

I tried to contemplate how old that really is.

And that ends my first time in an old growth forest , and hopefully not my last time.

Arta