By Jan Jackson –
Do you have any idea what makes beautiful stuff like this grow? Rain. Rain, shade and filtered light, just right temperatures and people to do everything they can to keep it that way.
The forest floor is full of plants like this. A little higher off the ground are bushes like the wild red huckleberry. These photos weren’t taken in old growth forests – but young forests that let the light come in.
The world – yes, the world – is lucky that Western Oregon is such a perfect place to grow trees and luckier yet that it’s tree farmers and loggers know how to manage them. The big eye roller is the number of people who have read that some places are annihilating their forests. Those same people rag on about Oregon timber industry that plants more than 40 million trees a year and protects the environment while they do it.
Had just that conversation with a taxi owner, who lives in a wooden house and burns non-renewable fuel in her cab every single day. My advice to her was when she wanted to talk about annihilating forests, either make an exception for Oregon or at least leave Oregon out of it.
Photos by Morris R. Pike taken at the Drift Creek Falls trail.
