aspect

I'm just back from a hike through Russ Park. It's within the city limits of Ferndale, so close that I was easily able to walk there. In a straight line, it's perhaps four blocks from my front door, a little more than that counting the less than straight roads in between.

The park sits on the first ridge of the Wildcat Hills, which rise quickly at the edge of town. The top of the ridge is perhaps 480 feet, not high relative to some of the ridges to the south. But there are some very steep slopes within the park, some approaching vertical.

Winter storms coming in off the ocean from the northwest cross the level Eel River delta, and hit the Wildcat Hills. In part because of the extra precipitation that results, there's a stand of Sitka spruce on the north facing slopes. Sitka spruce is more typical of places well to the north, and this is one of the southernmost large mature stands. On the somewhat sunnier south facing slopes, Douglas fir predominates. The several ravines which drain the park tend to support something closer to a riparian community, red alder and at lower elevations, bigleaf maple. Everywhere in the park is a dense carpet of ferns, some of them six feet tall, and bright green moss.

The forest in Russ Park is not old growth; in fact the place has been quite dynamic over the past few centuries. Government Land Office survey notes from the 1850s describe a place with large spruce 36 inches in diameter and more, and also with considerable standing dead timber. The cause is uncertain; a major Cascadian earthquake is well documented from approximately 1700, and it likely did plenty of damage on the unstable steep slopes of the Wildcat. But 150 years would have been plenty of time to recover from that. So what the surveyors described may have been caused by drought and catastrophic fire, or an insect infestation, or any of several other things.

In any case over the next half century most of the trees on the ridge south of town were cut. Turn of the century photos of Main Street show nearly bare grassy hills in the background, with a few patches of young trees returning.

The 105 acres which are now Russ Park were donated to the City of Ferndale in 1920 by Zipporah Patrick Russ. It's noteworthy that donations of parkland are apparently one of the reliable paths to what passes for immortality in human culture; most everyone else from that time is forgotten today, and yet each day we walk those trails, we see her name.

It's unlikely that any of the forest standing today within the park is more than 100 years old. It does not yet have the complex multi-layer canopy and abundance of standing dead snags and down woody debris that characterizes old growth. Yet it's now a mature forest, and over the next few decades it will progress toward the old growth state. The three light gaps caused by storms a few years ago are regenerating, each adding complexity to the site.

When I left the house around noon today, it was foggy but dry. There had been some light rain last night, but nothing during daylight hours. As I ascended the trail I entered the fog, and soon, near the top of the ridge, it was for all practical purposes raining. Not from the sky; instead, this was fog drip, the mature trees harvesting the fog, the drops falling onto the trail. The trees are now large enough to create their own weather, in the process perpetuating themselves and the lush green undergrowth below them. An ecological process disrupted for decades by logging has once again begun to function.

It was a relaxed and uneventful walk. On the way back down I found a rough-skinned newt walking on the trail, his bright orange belly warning would-be predators away from his toxic skin secretions. A few frogs called sporadically from the ferns, not moved into the ponds yet. Small birds, nuthatches and chickadees, flitted from tree to tree. A larger mammal moved away from me, unseen in the dense growth; probably a deer, although I've seen bear on that hillside before.

Russ Park is maintained by local volunteers. While it's not a formal restoration project, spruce have been planted in a clearing where non-native eucalyptus fell in winter storms, and the trail needs constant attention to maintain access. I saw three other people today on the trails, so it's a resource that is used by the local community, and by tourists visiting to birdwatch or just get outdoors for a walk. Certainly I appreciate having it so nearby.