![\"\"](\"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Eifert-Fort-Townsend.jpg\" "\\"Eifert-Fort-Townsend\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis should enlarge with a click. Please do so as there are lots of details.<\/em><\/p>\n Just a mile or so from our studio<\/strong> is one of the rarest of all Northwest places –\u00a0a lowland old-growth forest.\u00a0It’s quite a park, and for Nancy and me,\u00a0just walking the road into this place is often almost spiritual.\u00a0Here in Port\u00a0Townsend,\u00a0we’re on the dry side of the Olympics so these trees aren’t huge like\u00a0rainforest giants, but there’s an open and ancient feel\u00a0here that always gets my heart going. Giant glacial boulders dot the forest. Signs of old wildfires are evident. We watch pileated woodpeckers hammer out old snags. Cougar warning signs abound.\u00a0For about 8,000\u00a0years or since the last ice melted,\u00a0this place has been left to itself. Even when there was a\u00a0small military garrison here, the only trees cut were a few\u00a0for firewood.<\/p>\n So, while thousands of miles of forests, our heritage, have been whacked away and the land irreputably ruined, this place\u00a0has what\u00a0few lowland forests have these days – some very, very\u00a0rare plants. All those weird and odd plants that line the painting’s foreground are saprotrophic fungi, plants that don’t produce their own food but instead borrow it from the trees. You won’t see them in cut-over forests – if the forest goes, so goes most of the other stuff like\u00a0gnome plant, sugar stick and pinedrops. Even calypso orchids won’t reappear. I won’t go into it more here, but I consider this forest\u00a0to be something\u00a0of a sacred place, a place much like a world-class museum that holds\u00a0our most meaningful treasures – our\u00a0 heritage. These great forests\u00a0won’t return\u00a0ever again while humans are here, and so along with the few other scattered lowland patches of old-growth, this is IT!<\/p>\n Somehow the very active local\u00a0friends group for the park,\u00a0The Washington State Plant Society, came up with some funding for me to paint a mural for an exhibit at the park. Seriously, I can’t imagine anything more fun for me to do than paint this exceptional forest. I mean this is like a gift, a chance to actually\u00a0paint\u00a0my own backyard. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Here’s a picture by Nancy of the ol’ guy at the easel, half way through this effort. Was he dragging his feet? Well, maybe!\u00a0<\/p>\n Thanks Ann and Nancy of the friends group, this was just plain\u00a0fun.<\/p>\n And as usual, thanks for reading this week. Click <\/a>here to go to the online blog this was to.<\/p>\n Click <\/a>here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n Click<\/a> here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 This should enlarge with a click. Please do so as there are lots of details. Just a mile or so from our studio is one of the rarest of all Northwest places –\u00a0a lowland old-growth forest.\u00a0It’s quite a park, and for Nancy and me,\u00a0just walking the road into this place is often almost spiritual.\u00a0Here … Continue reading The Old-growth of Fort Townsend State Park<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n
\nLarry Eifert<\/p>\n