Day 23 - Billy’s Tree

June 18, 2021

The oldest cedar tree in the Boughtons is growing on a peninsula near Watson Cove on Tribune Channel.

We departed our lady boot cove anchorage at 8am to head up Tribune Channel against the ebb tide, hugging the side of the channel to use the eddies. Reaching Lacy Falls and lingering for some time in front of the falls which are as spectacular as described we made our way into nearby Watson Cove.

We entered the Cove staying tight to the north to avoid the rock off the southern point and anchored in 50 feet of water near the head.

We got in the skiff and landed where we thought we saw a rope on the shore and scrambled up the barnacle covered rocks and around a stream flowing into the bay. I tied the skiff onto the rope and Patti and Roman jumped ashore. The entrance to the path was not obvious and we had to bushwhack through a muddy forest canopy of salmon berries and salal. We spotted the tree uphill on our right as we entered a lowland clearing. The forest felt ancient and primeval with the sounds of our footsteps barely audible; absorbed by the moss and vegetation, leaving us in a kind of hushed reverence for this magnificent living being that was towering above us, the height of a 10 storey building and as wide as a house.

The moss covered stumps of the felled giants that had lived with this matriarch of the woods were visible all around and the new growth surround the tree looked like matchsticks in comparison being only hundreds of years old. We were thankful once again to our master navigator for ensuring that we had the chance to experience this incredible living thing which has stood for almost all of human history - for me this will be one of the highlights of the trip.

Getting back on the skiff after leaving our “trace” for the day to make it easier for others to find the trail, we made our way over to Kwatsi Bay which was a spectacular location but the marina and facilities had been abandoned for some time, possibly covid-related but who knows; so we tied up to the dilapidated docks for lunch and then spent some time sketching and exploring the grounds before departing for our evening anchorage that we had picked for our run south through the 5 gates tommorrow.

5.5 hours running time, 231L used, 757L remaining in main tanks, 18 hours range

The following is an excerpt from Heart of the Raincoast by Alexandra Morton and Billy Proctor who we met on Day 5.

1700 BC - The cedar is just starting to grow. This is the birth of the Olmec civilization on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

1400 BC - The cedar is 300 years old and about 70 feet tall. It suffered some hardships and is split twenty feet above the ground and has two tops. The Minoan civilization has just ended.

1200 BC - The cedar is 500 years old and has four tops, it is 80 feet tall and 30 inches in diameter. Hemlock and balsam are growing fast and straight beside the cedar, which at 500 is still young for its species

700 BC - The cedar is 1,000 years old. The surrounding trees have taken up much of the nutrients and the cedar is growing very slowly. One top was hit by lightning but luckily the fire didn’t burn the rest of the tree. At a thousand years old the tree is now but enough to support an eagles nest.

400 BC - The cedar is 1,300 years old. A big snowfall broke a limb and left a big scar. A burl is starting 10 feet above the ground. Alexander the Great conquers Egypt.

100 BC - At 1,600 years old the cedar is now 100 feet tall and eight feet in diameter. The Silk Road opens between China and the western world.

300 AD - The cedar is 2,000 years old. There is a community around the base with two long houses and two more across the bay under the bluffs. A landslide created a beautiful waterfall that shimmers with rainbows in the sun (Lacy Falls). The Huns invade northern China.

800 AD - The cedar is 2,500 years old. 300 years ago a huge storm blew down many surrounding trees and in their rotting fibre the big cedar reseeded future generations that now surround it.

1500 AD - At 3,200 years old the cedar has stopped getting any taller as the tops are dead. It’s heart has started to rot, rain somehow finding its way in. owls have nested in the tree for years, mink have dens in the roots. Europeans “discovered” the continent in 1492.

1800 AD - the cedar is 3,500 years old and 13 feet in diameter. The tree has outlived its neighbours because it never grew very tall. This saved it from the strongest winds and from becoming a canoe or a longhouse post. 6 years before Captain Vancouver sailed right past it to anchor at Deep Sea Bluff.

1994 AD - in the last hundred years handloggers passed the old tree. The ground was too flat for them to log near the tree as they needed a good slope to slide the logs into the bay but they lived there and stored their logs there. Right after the First World War more loggers came, they had a steam donkey and felled all the trees around the cedar and so it swayed in the winds. However the blow-down hundreds of years earlier had created strong roots in the tree and it held as it still does today.

Raincoast Recipes No. 2

Rigatoni with Italian Sausage

Ingredients

500g package hot Italian sausage

Large can of diced tomatoes

6 cloves of garlic, minced

1.5 tbsp of marjoram

1 cup red wine

Parmesan

Fresh parsley

Instructions

-Take the sausage meat out of the casings and brown in a frying pan.