Sometimes I wonder if I owe the best things in my life to a rainforest.
Sure, all of us owe a huge debt to rainforests—clean air and carbon storage, to name a couple essentials—but I mean something more personal: love, family, purpose.
That’s not what I was looking for the first time I visited a rainforest. I was on a post-college road trip to the US Pacific Northwest, just hoping to hike through what I’d heard was a stunning part of Olympic National Park. But nothing prepared me for those first moments in the Hoh Rain Forest: Centuries-old trees towered above, lime green moss draped countless branches, and only the sound of falling droplets punctuated the stillness.
We all learn about the “web of life” in middle school science, but standing under that massive canopy, knowing that the trees all around me were communicating and nurturing each other—and had been for millennia—brought it home in a way I can’t explain. I don’t know how anyone could walk away from that without a deeper understanding of connection.
I moved to Seattle not too long after, in part because it was easy to make regular trips to the Hoh Rain Forest. All I had to do was hop on a ferry to cross the Puget Sound, and drive three hours on US Route 101, past glacial lakes and former logging towns (one of which served as the setting for the Twilight movies). Soon I’d find myself back in the Hoh, one of the largest remaining stands of old-growth forest in the continental United States.
After visiting the Hoh a few times, I found myself taking the rainforest’s lessons of connection to heart: I proposed to my then-girlfriend (in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula, naturally). And when we later left for the urban jungle of New York City, I began working for the Rainforest Alliance, an organization built on the abiding belief that we are all connected—that if farmers and forest communities thrive, we all thrive; if nature flourishes, so do people.
My wife and I live in Vermont now, far from the majestic Hoh but close to a northern hardwood forest that our 3-year-old calls, “our woods.” She has a favorite fallen tree she visits often, dragging a stick over its upturned roots to “make coffee,” producing a rich brown dust that falls back to the soil—soil that will in turn nourish a new tree one day.
Funnily enough, our daughter’s best friend from preschool is named Sylvan, which means “of the woods.”
It probably goes without saying that they have a great connection.
Below are some photos I took at the Hoh Rain Forest.
One of the first things you’ll notice on a hike through the Hoh Rain Forest is the moss, lichen, and other epiphytes that seem to cover every surface with a soft, almost furry blanket. These beauties perform many helpful tasks like aiding in photosynthesis, filtering a nutrient-rich brew of “through-fall” moisture that feeds forest plants, and serving as a nutritious snack to foraging elk and deer.
When you enter the Hoh, your view is dominated by immense Sitka spruce and western hemlock trees rising from the ground. Sitka spruce bark has the appearance of wide shingles, while western hemlock has thinner strips of bark (not as craggy as the deep Douglas fir). These giants can rise hundreds of feet into the air, but a thick layer of moss covering the soil makes seed germination on the forest floor next to impossible. How then, do the trees propagate so beautifully? Walk a bit further into the forest and you’ll find the answer.
When a tree falls in the Hoh, it provides an ideal environment for new growth. Seedlings unable to take root in the crowded forest floor seize the opportunity to be “nursed” by the fallen trunk. As the “nurse log” slowly decomposes, it unlocks minerals, moisture, and warmth for the young trees, only a few of which will succeed in eventually putting roots into the ground. While hiking on trails in the forest, whether the crowded (for good reason) Hall of Mosses path, the short and scenic Spruce Nature Trail, or the extended Hoh River Trail, you’ll see fallen nurse logs giving life to seedlings everywhere you look.
Many decades later, after the nurse log has decomposed, the surviving trees stand in a row known as a “colonnade,” an architectural term for a long sequence of columns. The roots of these columns seem to stand on stilts around the ghost of the vanished nurse log—truly an amazing sight to see.
In addition to nursing new trees, the many fallen logs on the forest floor give plenty of life to other inhabitants of the forest. Over the course of decades, beetles, termites, and ants will feast upon the remnants of the log, helping to return its nutrients to the soil. Some studies estimate that decomposing logs provide the forest soil here with up to a third of its much-needed nitrogen—a critical ingredient in chlorophyll, the chemical that enables photosynthesis to occur.
And here’s our own woodland sprite, visiting her favorite fallen tree in Vermont. One day we’ll take her to the Hoh Rain Forest so she can experience for herself its awe-inspiring lesson of connection—though we think she already has a pretty good start learning that one.
Patrick Floyd has been part of the Rainforest Alliance’s creative team since 2012.
