The Bigleaf Maples

Reach up and you couldn't span one of these leaves with both hands. Bigleaf maple — and that name is not a guess. It carries the largest leaves of any maple on Earth, broad five-lobed fans that run wider than a dinner plate, and you're standing in the grove this whole trail is named for. Look how the limbs go fuzzy. That thick green pelt draping every branch is moss, and out of the moss hang little tongues of fern, rooted right into the bark itself. They're called licorice ferns, and they're epiphytes — plants that live up in the canopy without ever touching soil, drinking the rain and the river's mist straight out of the air. The maple isn't feeding them. It's just the perch. A whole hanging garden, riding the arms of a single tree. Down at knee height, that smaller maple with the tangled, almost vine-like stems is its cousin, the vine maple, weaving the understory together. Come back in October and none of this is green. The bigleafs turn — gold, then deep amber, dropping leaves the size of your face onto the trail, so many you'll hear them crunch before you see them. Keep climbing. The maples are with you the rest of the way up.