Bay Laurels Dancing

It's spring break for this environmental educator so I returned to Huckleberry Botanical Regional Preserve to hike and try out some new hiking shoes.

These are bay laurels... I'm told they are called pepperwoods in Oregon. Several trunks can grow from one root system, and the trunks will twist and grow all directions to find spots where they can grab sunlight. They look like dancers at an old time Grateful Dead concert... moving all over the place!

This park is fascinating. The basic soil comes from shale and chert, two sedimentary rocks from the ocean bottom. The soils that result when these rocks break apart are large grained, so they don't hold water, and low in nutrients. Chapparal shrubs like manzanita thrive in this part of the park.
Huckleberry shrubs show up later. When their fallen leaves decompose, a richer soil results. Rain washes it downslope and forests, like this one grow where it is plentiful.

The park was uncrowded today; I heard more birds than I did on Saturday. Chestnut backed chickadees were everywhere, warning of my presence
with their calls, "Chick -a-dee-dee!" They mustn't have found me very threatening; if they had, they would have called, "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!"
A California quail called from the ridgetop. A woodpecker tapped continually on
a tree. It was probably a male downy or Nuttal's woodpecker, pounding out an
signal that he wanted to mate. The train was muddy and slippery, the forest damp and beautiful.