To be in an old-growth forest is to feel cloaked, as if walking in a living terrarium, padding around a soft kingdom of green. Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and cedars interspersed with bigleaf maples garlanded with ferns and swags of moss are the signatures of these forests. Some of the conifers can persist to great age: Douglas fir to five hundred, eight hundred, and even a thousand years, and redcedar even longer. These trees can tower as much as 250 feet in height and grow to 60 feet around. These are forests with dead and downed logs everywhere. Communities of mosses, tree seedlings, and fungi thrive in this dead wood, which is more alive than the living trees next to it, for sheer biomass. Small mammals, amphibians, birds, and bears all make homes in the cavities of these dead and decaying trees. For old-growth forests are places where everything is alive, even things that supposedly are not—from the rocks cushioned with lichen and moss to the snags and logs teeming with new life. Read More from “The Trees are Speaking: Lynda Mapes’ Dispatches from the Salmon Forests”