In the Shadow of Giants

Not far from our North Vancouver home there’s a stand of old-growth Douglas firs that I first read about in Randy Stoltmann’s Hiking Guide to the Big Trees of Southwestern British Columbia, from 1987. Stoltmann, whom I met on a few occasions before he died in a backcountry skiing accident in 1994, tracked down and measured humongous coastal trees. In advocating for their protection, his guidebook, published by the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, provided statistical information and the location of several giants.

Heeding Stoltmann’s description that “the severity of the terrain is such that only experienced off-trail hikers should venture there,” I pressed my friend Peter, a skilled outdoorsman and a professional hydrologist, to help me find the way. A tiny opening became — like a cave in a Murakami novel — the portal to a cloistered and mysterious place. We clambered up a creek bank, tugging at roots and limbs for purchase. The terrain levelled out...