Komu, Karma, Kelsy, and Porter.

On today's walk through the woods, I counted 21 cedar trees larger than eight inches diameter.  Several dozen smaller cedars are looking healthy and growing slowly.  A few cedars planted thirty years ago are only about 18 feet tall.  Others planted in 2005, that grow in full sun by the storm drain outfall, are about 15 feet tall.  I have two hundred cedars in pots in my yard that are destined to be planted in ELP.  They need to get a little bigger before planting them out.  The EarthCorps report recommends planting 550 new trees in the park.  Most of these will need to be shade-tolerant evergreens because all the open areas are taken.  Cedars transplant well and have a high survival rate.  They tend to grow slowly in the shade, so the three hundred cedar trees won't really impact the character of the forest for several decades.  They can live for at least 1500 years, and they will play a dominant role, along with western hemlock, far in the future.  

Some of the significant cedars are already giants.  The one in the picture above is about four dogs wide.  A cedar at Quinalt Lake has a circumference of 63 feet and a height of 159 feet.  If the cedar pictured gets that big, with a diameter of twenty feet, the trail will have to be moved to a new alignment.  In a few centuries.  Cedars can grow in wet or dry, sunny or shady locations.  They are not the dominant tree in most forests simply because they don't grow as fast as Douglas-firs and hemlocks.  Cedars can take abuse.  One near the middle of the stairs bears a long scar from another tree falling on it.  It has wound about twelve feet long, but it is slowly healing that wound, covering the dead wood with new bark.  Another cedar near the eagle viewing bench has been knocked over, and it has grown sideways for years.  

I saw an eagle for the first time this year.  Many other people had reported seeing them in recent weeks and months, but this is the first time I had seen one in over a month.  I have been looking, just not at the right times.  

Stone #10 is pictured below on someone's newspaper box.  The mossy box is not in the park, but I walk by it every day.