Each year some two to three thousand kilograms, dry weight, of falling material litter an average hectare of forest. All this plant and animal waste—twigs, leaves, limbs, fallen trees, feathers, hair, feces, and carcasses—is processed by the armies of decomposers that thrive on the forest floor. With the aid of larger creatures that break up the plant and animal tissue, most microscopic bacteria are able to decompose from a hundred to a thousand times their own weight every day. Few trees die of old age in the forest. The seedling mortality rate is necessarily high, since far greater numbers of seeds germinate each year than can reach maturity. Of those that do, many fall victim to the ever-present dangers of disease, insect infestation, windfall, stream erosion, and fire. Insects alone present a formidable threat to trees, for they have evolved every means of attack—chewing and mining leaves, boring into twigs, eating cambium and heartwood, sucking sap, triggering galls. If the insect world did not police itself, aided by spiders, insectivorous birds and other animals, forests and other plantlife would quickly fade before the chewing, boring, sucking horde. ■ Through the trees the light on Citadel shows the morning slipping by. As I start to get up I see a garter snake sliding out into the dusty trail, seeking the sun-warmed earth. Moving slowly, alert for danger, it probes the air frequently with its sensitive tongue. But against the lightcolored duff its dark shape offers a fine target, begging attack. A chipmunk, watching from a nearby lookout stump, twitches its tail nervously over its back, curious—perhaps suspicious—at the sight of a snake. Very slightly the snake’s head goes up, its tongue flickering. For a few seconds reptile and rodent regard each other. Then the chipmunk drops back soundlessly into its hollow stump, and the snake lowers its head onto warm ground. Some day soon, a sparrowhawk or weasel will interrupt the snake’s morning sun-bath. The snake will fuel bird or mammal for a time, as mice, fledgling birds, and insects now sustain the snake. The chipmunk too, rummaging nearby, lives in shadows of talon and tooth. Until that time of sharp encounter, each has its own niche, a way of life, a shaft of sun, and food enough. A Walk in the Redcedar Forest Climax! The word takes on a true significance here, among these broad-based trees. When you enter this forest the road noise does not follow far—as, when you walk into a cave and turn a corner, sound and light are left behind. There is a surprising spaciousness, a feeling of openness in a mature western redcedar forest. With scant understory and the canopy so far above and everywhere complete, it seems like some vast, high-ceilinged catacomb, pillared by the huge, shaggy-barked cedars and the deeply scored trunks of the black cottonwoods. The floor is strewn with fallen giants in magnificent disarray, uplifted roots still grasping fractured rock.