La Push, Olympic National Park, Washington, USA. 2nd November 2018.
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Lettuce lichen.
We continue our walk through the Hoh Rainforest, following on from the previous post.
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Walking through tall silka spruce trees.
Silka spruce trees are fast growing, can reach over 100 metres in height (330 ft) and can live for over 600 years.
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Looking through to a natural lichen sculpture of some complexity.
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A view connected by diagonal branches.
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A remarkable tree beside the path.
There is rain water on the path at bottom left, but the water is still, so the rain has stopped for now.
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Green ferns on fallen red autumn leaves.
This and the next two are different viewpoints from the same position. I considered removing one or two but I decided they are sufficiently different to retain.
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Looking up towards the trees and lichen.
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A wider view with greenery and shapes.
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Epiphytic ferns and lichen hanging on a tree branch, draped at the top with autumn leaves.
This is actually a part of all three previous images. The ferns are epiphytic because they grow on the tree without harming it, unlike parasitic species. In Australia, for example, we have strangler figs that start off in the branches of a tree, send roots down to the ground, then envelop and kill their host. They become a large tree themselves but leave a hollow centre that becomes a valuable wildlife habitat.
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Hanging branches covered in lichen.
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A veritable maze. Could become a nightmare jigsaw puzzle.
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Silka spruce trees and ferns.
The red colours on the ground are not autumn leaves. They are areas of ferns that have died for some reason. Note the tree stump in mid left distance.
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Here is that tree stump from the last image again, and a neighbouring tree.
It may look as though I have wandered off the track and into the rainforest to take this image but no, it’s just the difference between a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens. The previous images was at the full-frame equivalent focal length of 15mm and this one is 275mm..
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Somehow it’s like a giant apple tree in a surrealist mood.
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I could almost imagine this as being underwater with fishes slowly drifting through.
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Another complex view.
The Hoh Rainforest is thousands of years old and covers 62 square kilometres (24 sq mi). The western coast of North America (and the Rocky Mountains) has been above water since the Cretaceous, even when there was the Western Interior Seaway to the east. The proximity to the Rockies produces high rainfall along the coast, here and further north, although it can be much drier on the other side of the mountains. So there is probably a very long history for rainforest here, albeit interrupted by various ice ages.
Olympic National Park (including the Hoh Rainforest) was created in 1938. When you are here it seems timeless but this is not really true, especially considering the effect we are having on the climate World-wide. Even if we stop burning all fossil fuels immediately, the juggernaut of anthropogenic climate change still rolls on, and the way we are heading, increasingly severe problems will soon be upon us, with critical problems for future generations. An average increase of a few degrees coupled with increased climate disturbance does not sound much, but it will take many species out of their viable environmental zone. Some will be able to cope but many will need to migrate either away from the equator or further up in altitude. This is particularly a problem for trees who are very slow to cast off seeds, regrow and move the forest. And the climate is changing very quickly. The effect will be greater closer to the tropics because there is little seasonal variation there and thus less capacity to adapt. Although the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else, regions closer to the poles have greater climate swings so life may have somewhat better capacity to adapt there.
We like to think we are isolated in our individual worlds and our urban environments but we are all inescapably part of the Global Biome. We are all dependent on it for a congenial environment to live in and for availability of food. Both of those are under threat. Sustainable development is the most fundamental issue of our times. Undesirable change is already upon us and bearing down fast. So we must vote and act as best as we can to preserve a habitable environment, in our own interests as well as the interests of future generations and all life.
(These thoughts come partly because I have just finished reading The Atlas of Changing Climate by Brian Buma).
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Perhaps like a waterfall of lichen-covered branches.
One interesting effect of climate change is that Yellow Cedars, an important tree in coastal Alaska, are dying off because the rising temperature means they are getting too cold. Que? How is that possible? Well, warmer temperatures mean less snow and more rain. Then when it gets really cold, they don’t have the snow to insulate their roots and they cannot survive. It’s an example of how complex these changes can be.
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A lattice-work of branches and dead autumn leaves. Potentially another nightmare jigsaw puzzle.
I didn’t see any wildlife (you probably need to go off the trails and get lost) but wildlife here includes black bears, elk, pumas, bobcats, coyotes, red foxes, raccoons, black-tailed deer, northern spotted owls and tree frogs. (Maybe going off the rails and getting lost is another option. Humans aren’t wildlife so we must be tamelife.)
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A close-up of a branch of a fern.
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Another close-up of ferns.
This one is focus-stacked. In other words, macro shots have very limited depth of field, so I have taken many shots with slightly different focus and combined them.
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An elegant tree, a gentle interplay of light and shade.
Lighting for many of these images was a little tricky. For some I combined multiple exposures for an HDR image. Then when I had finished processing (in Capture One), I’d go back and compare that with the original image quickly processed (in Lightroom). Sometimes I would find I’d overcooked it and that would lead me to go back and adjust the HDR image, or start processing again using just one of the images in the HDR.
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Last glimpse of a delicate draping tree sculpture.
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And now we are back in La Push.
It’s a wild moody sea yet somehow at the same time it’s calm and serene.
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Our visit to this wonderland of wild nature is highly therapeutic (even visited remotely through the web) and it calls out to us to help preserve it and Nature in general. The threats to this come from corporate and millionaire greed, as well as undermining of democracy and natural justice. They have been defeated before and can be again.
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