Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Cathedral Grove

Hi friends.
So far I am really enjoying my vacation time, it's just great -- sleeping in, being lazy, constantly eating and drinking, and not working at all.
This afternoon we went on a little hike through an old-growth forest, here on Vancouver Island. The place is called Cathedral Grove and it is just so serene and fascinating. It boggles my mind how OLD some of these trees are. The one in the following video, for instance, was already 300 years old when Christopher Columbus discovered America. This tree was alive in The Middle Ages! Speaking of wood, this tree was almost a century old already when wooden movable type was first invented in China by Wang Zhen in the year 1298. In other words, it is staggeringly old. And large. All of my cinematographical prowess could not really capture it in this filmclip.
A windstorm swept through Cathedral Grove on New Years Day, 1997, toppling a lot of the trees -- but I'm so glad this old giant survived.
It is a venerable, majestic ol' brute of a tree!


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