The Whidbey Camano Land Trust led an informative walking tour through a section of old growth forest on the western bluffs of Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve byCamp Casey Conference Center. The forest contains a variety of 300+ year old trees and native understory, plus feeds the beaches below by eroding into Puget Sound. Since much of the Ebey’s Prairie area had been logged and farmed over the past 150 years, this patch of forest is a valuable reminder of that area’s actual natural ecosystem. In the 1800s bears, wolves, and occasional Native Americans roamed these forests, and now they are roamed by tourists with owls and eagles overhead.
The southwest winds across Puget Sound are sometimes so strong that they have contorted Douglas fir trees into a Medusa’s head of gnarled limbs. Over long periods of time, broken branches and adaptation to the wind has created very different shapes than the commercially harvested, telephone pole shaped variety of Douglas fir with which most people are familiar.