Tim’s Trail – A Reforestation Story

Tim’s Trail is a shy fifth of a mile long.  You can find it on the map in the left side of the upper-right hand square that is the northeast corner of the Island Center Forest (ICF).  Tim’s Trail is one of five ICF trails named after a person, the others being Jack, Craig, Sunny, and Mike.  What are their stories, I wonder?  Here is mine as it pertains to the trail.

I started exploring this area around 2010 (plus or minus 3 years – I’m a bit fuzzy on the timing) when I was living in Vashon Cohousing.  I rambled some, but was mostly interested in finding a way to get from Cohousing to Mukai Pond and the forest trails without having to set foot on pavement.  The route I established passed through dense sections of Scotch Broom and sometimes followed the ruts left by vehicles that “mud-bogged” here years before (at least three of these vehicles got stuck and never made it out; the trail goes by one of them – the “bumper sticker” car).

My cohousing neighbor, Jim Evans, taught me that the Scotch Broom is an unwelcome visitor to the pacific northwest.  It is an ecosystem killer, shading out native flowers, shrubs and trees.  The resulting near-monoculture is inhospitable to most of the native insects, birds and other fauna that need native plants for habitat.

I removed some Scotch Broom to establish my trail, uprooting the smaller ones and cutting down the big ones (their trunks were up to 4 inches in diameter).  Walking the trail, I would sometimes tarry and use my boot to lever a smaller Scotch Broom out of the ground.  It was a small positive response to the invasive scourge, and it was fun.  Over time I was walking less and levering more.  Then I started bringing out a pick, shovel and saw to go after the bigger ones.  This was also fun, and addictive.

The first trees I planted along the trail were two root-bound, potted cedars.  I learned from them that deer not only like to eat cedar shoots but also will thrash the trees with their new antlers, satisfying urges that I imagine to be similar to the ones babies satisfy by teething. The thrashings the two cedars received broke off branches and nearly girdled them.  Although I gave them up for dead, the trees persisted, growing out of their deer vulnerability and teaching me another lesson, this one about the tenacious life force of conifers.

In 2014, I began a yearly practice of clearing areas along or near the trail and planting them with trees.  Some years I have been on my own; others I am joined by family and friends.  My primary seedling source has been the Vashon Maury Island Land Trust’s annual native plant sale.  Plant pick-up day is a combination of Christmas and Easter for folks devoted to restoration.  Thousands of vigorous shrubs and trees are distributed to islanders who plant them from one end of the Island to the other to reclaim or enhance natural areas. I have planted (in descending order of abundance): Douglass-fir, White Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Grand Fir, Lodgepole Pine, Cedar, Spruce, and Hemlock.  I am not a high-volume planter, averaging about 20 trees a year.  I mulch generously and water trees in their first summer when it gets too dry.  The survival rate of the trees I’ve planted so far is over 95%.

The oldest plantings are near the northern terminus of the trail, mostly on the east side.  Trees I have planted now extend from the vicinity of an older (but still young for a conifer – 80 years, maybe?) Doug-fir to the east to another on the other side.  I imagine a day when the mycorrhizal companions of the newer trees create a continuous network that joins the legacy trees on either end. 

Removing Scotch Broom turned out to be relatively easy compared to displacing my current invasive nemesis, the Himalayan Blackberry.  After the broom forest was uprooted/cut down, I readied myself for waves of returning plants, produced by some portion of the millions of long-lived seeds left by the broom that my friends and I pulled.  But the return has been paltry, even in the unshaded areas where the trees are just getting started.  This has freed me up to clear more open space for conifers by removing blackberry.  These plants are terribly persistent.  The root systems of an “old growth” blackberry cluster can extend 15 feet in multiple directions.   The roots can also extend to depths of two feet or more.  Along the trail you will find trophy piles of blackberry roots, the lateral roots extending tentacle-like from the thickened root hearts.

A little more about the blackberry (sorry, but it is an obsession): any section of root left behind will send up a new shoot. Leaving bits behind is inevitable, so a planted section requires ongoing attention.  As the trees fill out the space, their shade will slow down and – with a little help – eventually stop the blackberry.  Then it will be time to protect against the two great forest invasive threats on Vashon, holly and ivy, but that is an obsession for another day.  My experience with all these pests helps me understand why herbicide application is the accepted approach for large-scale restoration projects.  

The opportunity to facilitate and witness the growth of the trees along this trail has been a great gift.  As with the growth of a child, it happens faster than you expect.  I remember a moment about five years in when I looked up from my digging and realized that the first few sections I had planted no longer looked like a tree farm but rather a very young forest.  It takes an effort to recall how it looked when I started.  If you expect to be in the same place for a number of years, I recommend that you find a neglected patch of land and start planting trees.  In my life, few things have been more gratifying.