Mt Rainier National Park, Big Trees

(click to enlarge and get full effect)
For anyone who doesn't know Mt Rainier is a volcano, one of many here along the Pacific Coast...


Returned now from Mt Rainier National Park. I went to see the Grove of The Patriarchs, a small grove of old growth trees standing since 1000 years ago when a fire went through the valley killing off all the the older trees that came before them.
( thanks for the suggestion Linda) I had not been to this part of Rainier yet.

I'm not showing the Patriarchs here, just some other large trees in the area. The reason is the Patriarchs are guarded by unsightly wooden pathways and porches and rails to keep people from damaging the trees. It is so sad we can't even manage these days to leave them alone, and just look at them without making a man made environment for them to survive in, just to protect them from people who touch and climb until they are worn smooth and damaged by roughness.
I apologized for us all. The old trees are huge and beautiful, yet unsightly due to the 'fenced in look' surrounding them.

Mostly I took photos of these other Cedars and Douglas Firs. Very large too, and beautiful.
The first one is a Douglas blocking the trail. It's texture is so deep and it is so amazing.

The other two photos are one Cedar ( Western Red, Thuja Plicata). Too large for one photo.
Please look at the posts below this one to get an idea of what we are doing to our environment and what has been done in old growth and how it affects us.



I'll be visiting some more "big trees" to show soon..until then, here is a Steller Jay from the park, Michelle. I could almost sprinkle salt on it's tail I was so close.

Big trees harvested in Washington and PNW area early 1900's, Old Grown Timber

Imagine, 100 truckloads per an estimated average 5000 cubic metres of the rare and endangered ancient Douglas firs.



site here
Some people never see this, but I see it every time I hike, huge stumps left of these giants, red in color, like they have bled to death.

Every back woods cafe has photos on the wall of these BIG trees that were all over this area up until the white man migrated here, (Weyerhauser in particular) and took them all down. As I understand we have some pockets that might not be known about, a few stands, and of course stands we know of, but in Seattle, for instance, not one was left standing.

Maybe no one can really understand 'tree huggers' who haven't seen the majesty of these big trees. They were literally all over this area, and I have to wonder what these numbered, in truck loads ...all these trucks toting trees out of the forest. It is simply unimaginable. ( not only the trees , but the loggers and the trucks). Every valley here, BIG trees, all the way to Puget Sound, and all over NW Canada, too. Try for a minute to picture this, imagine you could come here now and see this portion of the NW, a park, spared for your wonder.



Maybe it's too late, but it isn't too late to save the bees, and water, and fresh air, the oxygen levels, the oceans, and the seas. Not to mention ...us. Remember, the largest Sequoia known:
The large Sequoia on that site gives these stats..
"Ecosystem Services:
It would cost $3589.32 to replace the storm water control service provided by this tree, based on the engineering standards used in the building industry. The same tree removes 20.32 lbs. of nitrogen, sulfur, ozone and particulate matter every year."

Now imagine what millions of these trees did for our environment. ( times 1 million = 20,320,000 lbs of nitrogen, sulfur, ozone, and particulate matter per year). Hope I got my zeros right.

There was more oxygen on the planet in the early 1900's as I understand it, and I have read that lack of oxygen contributes to cancer and disease, obesity, etc. many of our modern day ailments.

I've heard of a stand that might be unknown, (shh don't let the loggers know) and I need a special vehicle to go there, I can't take my car there because the road would ruin my car. I'd like to go photograph it, and measure the trees. Maybe I'll name the place Sherrywood. grin

You'd be the first to see the photos!

Does this make you sad or what? Parading the bounty down Main Street.

More photos and information









see more here

The ancient forests of North America have almost completely disappeared due to robber barons such as Weyerhaeuser. The company first grabbed lands held in public trust in 1900 and continues its pillage today: in May 2008 Weyerhaeuser cut a dirty deal with Plum Creek Timber in Montana which netted the two forest liquidators a total of almost $700 million in tax breaks. We continue to give legitimacy to the annihilation of nature by making loggers into folk heros and by accepting ruthless capitalists as cultural patrons. The Forest History Society proudly proclaims that its existance is largely due to German immigrant Frederick ("Timber King") Weyerhaeuser, and his "personal dedication to preserving the history of the industry that built his family's fortune." The Society goes even further and pretentiously claims to be "unique as the only organization on the planet solely dedicated to preserving forest and conservation history." Back in 1944, Weyerhaeuser's logging propaganda was more directly shown in a series of murals (right).(see link)





Trees as curiosities

In British Columbia..Cathedral Canyon
On 3 May 2006 a group of forest activists and members of the Friends of Cathedral Grove (FROG) set off on an exploratory expedition up the Cameron River into the poorly known and inaccessible Cathedral Canyon (right). They made the shocking discovery that ancient trees in the primaeval and steep elevation forest are being clandestinely high graded for their commercial value and helicopter logged by the Island Timberlands contractors of Brookfield (formerly Brascan, Weyerhaeuser, MacMillan Bloedel). The pristine Cathedral Canyon is the centrepiece of the proposed protection plan to expand Cathedral Grove to a total of 2000 hectares and the destruction of its rare and irreplaceable big trees by the multinational logging industry is yet another assault on BC's endangered ancient fir forest ecosystem.

This site has links to tree sites in Europe
European Tree Sites

Dedicated to The Pollinators, also Kiva revisited, this next week, please pass this info on will you?

Although I planted late, and I have only tiny squash now (in Sept for all practical purposes), I am so happy to see the pollinators. These little guys make our food possible,and are at risk worldwide.
It is so scary to think we'd have to try to pollinate by hand as some cultures now do, because the bees all died out.
My goodness what we take for granted.

Without bees to pollinate, we would only have grain and oats to eat I believe. (unless we pollinated each flower by hand), can you imagine pollinating a cherry tree? A blackberry bush? Ouch!

And these little guys work work work, never ask for a penny, just a life.

Here are my photos, I dedicate them to the pollinators



Click to enlarge photos please:












Maybe you'd like to blog this?
KIVA


If you have never heard of Kiva, let me introduce you, Kiva is a non profit organization that allows me to loan money to people who are in need to support their families around the world. You can loan as little as $25.00.
I have loaned to several families worldwide, in 3rd world countries, and been paid back. I suppose I even make a little, but I loan it out again. I think if it were me living in such poverty, I would feel so grateful some one cared about me and my family, and was willing to loan me money to start or increase my farming or fishing or weaving, etc. business.
I would feel warmth coming from what might otherwise feel like a very cold world.
For me I feel I might bring hope for a future for another person, family or group of people.
You can decide who you want to loan to and how much, and you can lift others out of the cycle of poverty.

So if you are interested in using your coffee money, or setting aside a little entertainment money to help folks in another land, please take a look at Kiva, and if you sign up, please sign as my guest, because so far, none I have invited has joined KIVA.
Here is the form I usually send out with email addresses on it, and if you want an invitation form me, just let me know, ok?

I wanted to let you know about Kiva (www.kiva.org), a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

I loaned to Maniga Gondo, Maniga is 44 years old.


She is married and has 5 children. Maniga lives with her family in Abobo, a township in the north of Abidjan. She sells fruits and legumes in the Abobo open market. She is a dynamic woman who strongly contributes to her family's revenue generation. She heard about AE&I in June 2004 and got her first loan one month later. She is a good performer. She will use the loan to purchase goods in bulk and improve her revenues. Her 4th child (a boy) will attend grammar school in September, and she wants to be ready to pay his school fees. She borrowed a total of 800.00 and paid it back in less than the year she borrowed it for. I would love to meet her. It would be so wonderful to meet her. I wish her well.

I have loaned to a Vietnamese fisherman and his wife for a boat, and this loan is paid back 67%. I have a new loan out to a group in Tanzania who are raising poultry. Surely you have $25.00 to spare to begin a loan to someone in need to have a better life! Thank you!




Kiva is an organization that is very special, please support KIVA!
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13772

Bus coming... Mt Baker, Kiva Loans

This is a photo I took out my sun roof. Green City limit signs flank the sides of the photo where the bus is crossing over a bridge from Everett into Mukilteo.

Mt Baker view from a neighborhood not far from where I live..


Impatience on a road nearby, Forest park area, of Mukilteo Blvd. ( From a community planting every year), and about now, the impatiens are very large, a few feet high, so beautiful, and the trees are large, too, giant ferns abound. I love this drive. My windshield doesn't offer the best view...


KIVA


If you have never heard of Kiva, let me introduce you, Kiva is a non profit organization that allows me to loan money to people who are in need to support their families around the world. You can loan as little as $25.00.
I have loaned to several families worldwide, in 3rd world countries, and been paid back. I suppose I even make a little, but I loan it out again. I think if it were me living in such poverty, I would feel so grateful some one cared about me and my family, and was willing to loan me money to start or increase my farming or fishing or weaving, etc. business.
I would feel warmth coming from what might otherwise feel like a very cold world.
For me I feel I might bring hope for a future for another person, family or group of people.
You can decide who you want to loan to and how much, and you can lift others out of the cycle of poverty.

So if you are interested in using your coffee money, or setting aside a little entertainment money to help folks in another land, please take a look at Kiva, and if you sign up, please sign as my guest, because so far, none I have invited has joined KIVA.
Here is the form I usually send out with email addresses on it, and if you want an invitation form me, just let me know, ok?

I wanted to let you know about Kiva (www.kiva.org), a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

I loaned to Maniga Gondo, Maniga is 44 years old.


She is married and has 5 children. Maniga lives with her family in Abobo, a township in the north of Abidjan. She sells fruits and legumes in the Abobo open market. She is a dynamic woman who strongly contributes to her family's revenue generation. She heard about AE&I in June 2004 and got her first loan one month later. She is a good performer. She will use the loan to purchase goods in bulk and improve her revenues. Her 4th child (a boy) will attend grammar school in September, and she wants to be ready to pay his school fees. She borrowed a total of 800.00 and paid it back in less than the year she borrowed it for. I would love to meet her. It would be so wonderful to meet her. I wish her well.

I have loaned to a Vietnamese fisherman and his wife for a boat, and this loan is paid back 67%. I have a new loan out to a group in Tanzania who are raising poultry. Surely you have $25.00 to spare to begin a loan to someone in need to have a better life! Thank you!




Kiva is an organization that is very special, please support KIVA!
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13772

Coast-guard warns a boater

This boat went in front of the ferry I was on. It is illegal to pass in front of a ferry, so the coast guard seemed to have fun giving chase and slowing him down. Mt Rainier in background.

Every tree must die....oneday,.. Hollow Tree at Stanley Park is 1000 years old..

Can you imagine being 1000 years old? This picture was taken 100 years ago, at the 1/10 age mark of this trees life. Imagine another 1000 years!

How would you like to be a tree standing a few thousand years to make the air better for everyone, and have no one care?
What if all these people who don't appreciate trees and just remove them because they have no respect for life other than their own, have to come back in another lifetime and stand there for 2000 years, not going anywhere? Kind of grim, huh?
Maybe that's why trees moan, they are really souls who have committed some terrible unkindness and are now paying their dept to the cosmos by having to live as a tree.

If I were such a tree, I'd welcome storms that would move me around a bit; birds for companions, an occasional bear scratching my bark, a deep drink of water after a drought, and a child especially, because children are usually always appreciative even though adults aren't always, who might come to visit me and climb in my branches and sing songs. Maybe build a simple tree house, but nothing too adult like that would drive nails through my branches.

I'd enjoy a nice rain storm, and I might like the woodpecker that gets those pesky bugs out of my old first layers. A symbiotic relationship might be nice, maybe with a few species, then I wouldn't feel so uncared for. I mean I wouldn't want to be wanted simply for my lumber! Or e-gads for some conquest by men who were out to prove they had the stamina to saw through me. I can see me now, a huge log all by myself on the bed of a loggers truck in a photograph 100 years after my demise, hanging on the wall of some backwoods cafe, lying there dead, branches tossed aside and only a trunk of what I used to be, while men stand by with their saws in hand, grinning ear to ear because they felled me, and were so proud. I am seeing their smiles, now with a few front teeth missing. Well, if I was half the man I was a tree I'd show them a thing or two!!!
© Jerez2008

This one won't enlarge..

As much as I love the Big trees, I also love every tree, they are all unique, and necessary, we need trees, but when I was in Vancouver, (and I wish I had taken a photo), but this tree at Stanley Park had gone down in a storm. This is an old photos of it, as you can see by he dress of the day..also it's in B&W.

"The Hollow Tree in Stanley Park is a tourist favourite. On the West side of Stanley Park Drive, it’s a frequent stopping zone and photo op. During the storms of 2006, the tree was weakened beyond already being hollow at the base, and the Parks Board would now like to spend $200,000 to restore it."

Here's the article..Should the Parks Board spend almost a quarter of a million dollars to support and create a bionic Hollow Tree? Or should nature simply take its course, and we’ll lose a familiar natural landmark? They are taking a poll. I say, let the tree die with dignity. Use the money to protect other trees.
Photo of the Big tree taken in 1907
Big Tree in 1907
Another point of view, shows we people are not just practical, but have hearts..that die hard.
Regular trees

"This is a special tree, it may be dead, it's in a certain stage but it's a very important tree," said Kelman. "When you have a tree that is this important, it's a monument."

The last days of the tree as it is make Rocky Garandza a little sad and nostalgic.

The window contractor from Victoria, in town for the day, stopped for one last look at the Hollow Tree.

"Last time I was here was 15 years ago," said Garandza yesterday, as he took pictures. "I always just thought it would be here forever."

Video here about tree.. video

Regular trees and Big trees..
must click to enlarge to get the real effect of these giant trees.



My recent photos of big trees in Stanley Park Vancouver, BC

Giant Trees Registry, Save the Big Trees!

I may go big tree hunting soon...maybe I'll see if my city has a tree registry, it should because it claims to be it is the city of trees. I might like to begin mapping big trees. That would be fun to do, and might keep people from being abl eto cut them down for money purposes. I think the planet and our oxygen supply is more important than a view of the water. I did a search, Go figure, the City of Trees has no tree registry.



This is a Thuja Plicata, aka Western Red Cedar. It lives in the Olympic National Park. I found it in the records of the National Register of Big trees. This tree is 63.41 feet in circumference, well was in 1945 when it was last measured..lol.

"Ecosystem Services:
It would cost $634.85 to replace the storm water control service provided by this tree, based on the engineering standards used in the building industry. The same tree removes 3.59 lbs. of nitrogen, sulfur, ozone and particulate matter every year."

The large Sequoia on that site gives these stats..
"Ecosystem Services:
It would cost $3589.32 to replace the storm water control service provided by this tree, based on the engineering standards used in the building industry. The same tree removes 20.32 lbs. of nitrogen, sulfur, ozone and particulate matter every year."

Neighbors just took out a 40 year old weeping willow, to enhance the view from the McMansion they built next door. It caused the water table to rise and my house flooded. The tree was the largest willow I have ever seen. I imagine it was about 17 feet around. It provided a wall of greenery that gave privacy from the hillside and was so beautiful. Next these new neighbors,( not yet moved in), asked if we wanted our large cedars cut down. Really! Anyway, now we have a big (ugly) house next door and we have to plant some plicata's or daodara's or giant green thuja's to get our privacy back. The tree incidentally wasn't on their lot, but I imagine they asked to have taken out for their views sake.
Steam rising here! :)

I think a view is becoming over rated here, Afterall, the beach is a 3 block walk away.

I wish I had thought to get this tree registered, maybe it would still be standing. Trees grow faster here than any place on earth. A Plicata grows 6 ft a year.

Any big trees near you? Save the big trees!

More Big Trees ( found on the internet) In British Columbia old trees are aged up to 2000 years. This one with my daughter and Jeremy was taken at Stanley Park recently.

More big trees...






At least 3 if not 4 of these are in Washington.

Trees of Washington's Olympic peninsula
"This land of breathtaking mountains and rich, green forests, is a paradise to lovers of big trees. For giant trees, the Olympic Peninsula is equaled by few and surpassed by no areas. Only parts of nearby Vancouver Island, as well as Oregon, California and Australia, still have trees over 300 ft tall. To most earthlings a "tall" tree is 75 to 100 ft. Thousands of Douglas firs on the Peninsula don't even branch that near to the ground! Sitka spruces and red cedars stand whose trunks are 20 ft through! The very bark on ancient firs can exceed a foot in thickness.
About a hundred years ago, pioneers logged the raw, dripping forests, seeking extra-large trees even as we do now. But the motives have altered dramatically. Early loggers took pride in felling the mightiest specimens; we, their descendants, enshrine our record-size trees, admiring with joy the inspiring sight of nature's ultimate growth. Excess fascinates us, whether it be wealth, celebrity, athletic achievement or size.
So, naturally, we wonder: where are the largest trees? Olympic National Park employees receive so many requests for big tree information that a list of the record trees within the park is kept on file. The State has an ambitious big tree program sponsored by the U.W. Al Carder, a retired professor of plant science who lives north of Victoria has spent years writing a global account of big trees. It is long overdue, therefore, to give credit and recognition to the Peninsula's outstanding trees -- for this is truly the land of the giants..... Presently, the tallest tree known in the whole Northwest is a 326 ft fir in the Queets Valley. Well-documented examples around 400 ft once stood, though this is hard for most people to believe. The thickest trunks of firs presently are 44 1⁄2 ft around, which is a mere shadow of the bygone giants' girths and is easily surpassed by numerous spruces and cedars."

Harlequin Ducks on the Elwha River

 Harlequin Ducks, Histrionicus histrionicus, is a small sea duck. In North America it is also known as Lords and ladies. Other names include painted duck, totem pole duck, rock duck, glacier duck, mountain duck, white-eyed diver, squeaker and blue streak.  They are native here? I see them on the Elwha River on The Olympic Peninsula, but all I know is they are beautiful ducks. I enjoy seeing them in the river, and trying to photograph them. I got my info from Wikipedia, here's more of what I got.. "Harlequins have smooth, densely packed feathers that trap a lot of air within them. This is vital for insulating such small bodies against the chilly waters they ply. It also makes them exceptionally buoyant, making them bounce like corks after dives". I like that last part, 'bounce like corks'. " Two prehistoric harlequin ducks were described from fossils, although both were initially placed in a distinct genus: Histrionicus shotwelli is known from Middle to Late Miocene deposits of Oregon, USA and was considered to form a distinct monotypic genus, Ocyplonessa. Histrionicus ceruttii which lived in California during the Late Pliocene was at first taken to be a species of the related genus Melanitta. The Harlequin Duck takes its name from Arlecchino, Harlequin in French, a colourfully dressed character in Commedia dell'arte. The species name comes from the Latin word "histrio", "actor"." " Size: 33-54 cm (13-21 in) Wingspan: 56-66 cm (22-26 in) Weight: 500-726 g (17.65-25.63 ounce.