Douglas fir recalls by its name one of the heroes of science, David Douglas, a Scotch naturalist who explored these forests nearly ninety years ago, and discovered not only this particular giant of the woods, but also the great sugar pine and many other fine trees and plants. As a pioneer botanist, searching the forest, Douglas presented a surprising spectacle to the Indians. "The Man of Grass" they called him, when they came to understand that he was not bent on killing the fur-bearing animals for the profit to be had from their pelts.
Sugar Pine, Douglas Fir, and Yellow Pine.
The splendid conifer which woodsmen have called after him is one of the kings of all treeland. The most abundant species of the Northwest, it is also, commercially, the most important. Sometimes reaching a height of more than 250 feet, it grows in remarkably close stands, and covers vast areas with valuable timber that will keep the multiplying mills of Oregon and Washington sawing for generations. In the dense shade of the forests, it raises a straight and stalwart trunk, clear of limb for a hundred feet or more. On the older trees, its deeply furrowed bark is often a foot thick. Trees of eight feet diameter are at least three hundred years old, and rare ones, much larger, have been cut showing an age of more than five centuries.
To these areas of the greatest trees must come all who would know the real spirit of the forest, at once beneficent and ruthless. Here nature selects the fittest. The struggle for soil below and light above is relentless. The weakling, crowded and overshadowed, inevitably deepens the forest floor with its fallen trunk, adding to the humus that covers the lavas, and nourishing in its decay the more fortunate rival that has robbed it of life. Here, too, with the architectural splendor of the trees, one feels the truth of Bryant's familiar line:
The groves were God's first temples.
The stately evergreens raise their rugged crowns far toward the sky, arching gothic naves that vault high over the thick undergrowth of ferns and vine maples. In such scenes, it is easy to understand the woodsman's solace, of which Herbert Bashford tells in his "Song of the Forest Ranger:"
I would hear the wild rejoicing
Of the wind-blown cedar tree,
Hear the sturdy hemlock voicing
Ancient epics of the sea.
Forest aisles would I be winding,
Out beyond the gates of Care;
And in dim cathedrals finding
Silence at the shrine of Prayer.
* * * *
Come and learn the joy of living!
Come and you will understand
How the sun his gold is giving
With a great, impartial hand!
How the patient pine is climbing,
Year by year to gain the sky;
How the rill makes sweetest rhyming
Where the deepest shadows lie!
Yellow Cedar, with young Silver Fir.