San Josef Bay is on the far northern tip of Vancouver Island. This is such a wonderful place to visit and spend some time just being with the trees and the ocean. These trees were the ones that were just behind our tent.

The coal hills are just that huge mounds of coal left over from the early 1900’s. The coal has very little that can support life, but the progression of one robust pioneer plant becoming established and generating some organic matter,whole areas have naturalized to a state of being a tight primary forest.

June turns the thick brush into a destination. I do have my favorite wild rose plants , offering scents, variety of flower colour and shape. Just a continuous show of the huge variety.

I take such security from the path through the forest, off the path navigating through the forest is very different, even just stepping off the path calls to attention the heightened sense of placement.

The vines brambles and roses create areas that just cannot be entered. Yet I like that some animals and birds use this to theire advandage, making their homes there. It is very exciting to see a bird flying along then suddenly drop into the center of the brush.

It does make me laugh sometimes walking through the forest and then realizing that I have been unknowingly been walking through a grove of giants, the giant tress are just so suitable to being there that they are just blending in, just quietly living for the past centuries.

In the forest some of the areas are inviting, open and scenic. But there are also areas that are closed, and uninviting.

Popping out of the forest and into this clearing I just had to look up ti see the open sky, and now able to see just how tall the trees are.

A nice evening walk down to Coal Beach in the summer, the heat of the day disappears with a swim and looking back to the shore seeing the peace and tranquility.

While in an old growth forest, everything is just as it is, everything fits, even being beside a giant can be a surprise as they have been just fitting in.

These trees are just defining the space welcoming over there and obstructed over here.

The excitement of the young trees that are given an opportunity to populate a recently opened up part of the forest, generates a mayhem of volunteers.

There is a constant interaction at the creek.tree bows caressing the water flow, roots reinforcing the bank, as well as the steady dripping of the forest floor and root mass in to the creek.

the interface between the sand beach and the forest is very dynamic, generating some stability out of this ever changing environment; the shifting abrasive sand that is incrementally stabilized, the salt spray the that is shielded, the seasonal storm blasts that can carve out a different shoreline. Yet as soon as there is a certain amount of stability the forest begins.

Washer Creek is the water way right near by. it meanders up an oversized glacial spillway. The creek changes its tone from raging torrent, after the first fall storms, to a string of pools in the late summer.