Old Growth

 

                For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the power of old friends. The ones who knew you years and years ago—and who still come around. When you were 18 and moving into the dorms for college. When you were six and did not recognize your best friend because her mom had given her a perm. When you had big dreams of starting a commune and changing the world. When you were just starting out in your job, or marriage, or parenthood…The people who knew you, not just in THIS time and place, but in the other times and places, the places you are, truly, from, the first land whose scent meant home. The voice that sounds like yours, late at night.  Family is part of this memory bank but they people we have kept close, even if we do not see them for long periods of time, hold us together.

*****

 

Mark and I were hiking the North Oregon coast headlands this week. There was smoke in the Cascades so we headed West and North to the Pacific. Along the way, the coast smelled like Home—ocean water mixed with wood fires and the scent of diesel from fishing boats. We climbed up hills into some of the most complex ecosystems of trees I have ever seen—Pacific Old Growth. There were some stumps from harvests with trees growing from the tops, roots reaching down around the stumps like wax candles on a breezy mantle. Other trees were clearly lined up from an old log, arches all facing the same way. Ferns grew out of downed trees and high in the branches of snags. Salal reached across the trails, tempting  Mark with berries. Shelf fungi are clearly having a Moment—they are growing everywhere, tangling into branches from hemlocks that get in the way.  All lean on one another, old memories leaving their physical marks on the newer growth. Like us, I thought, wandering down the trail in the golden green light of coastal late afternoon, heading home to the Ark for the night.