A rainy day is a good time to walk a cedar trail, when the dull light seems to shine from the wet moss, making the underleaves of devil’s-club and Rocky Mountain maple glow. Wind and rain, like light, penetrate with difficulty the latticework of this canopy; thin lines of fog develop over the bogs. The air is fresh with growing plants, snow-cold still when the first spring flowers appear. Fiddleheads of unfolding lady ferns line the trail in May, pushing up from the hub of last year’s leveled, lifeless fronds. Beds of trillium shine their white, three-pointed flowers like flashlights in the dark recesses. Unlike the small, hidden calypso orchid, which bears its purple spikes and yellow throat low above the moss, the trilliums make no secret of spring growth. They are bold, handsome plants, broad-leaved and tall, with waxy white petals that tinge to purple in their month-long bloom. Moss covers everything. Boulders are green and weightless-looking, resilient and topped with miniature forests of cedar seedlings. Ancient fallen trees are disguised with blankets of moss, sprouting hemlock here and there. The rich greens that characterize Glacier’s summers seem to begin here amid the moisture-glossed leaves of twinflower, bunchberry and bead-lily. Later, the spiders will spin thousands of kilometers of gossamer filament among the trees. The orb-weavers will hang their webs high and low, suspended in every opening. Walking through the forest then, you will see shafts of sunlight whirling in the higher webs until they seem like tops set spinning among the treetrunks. Indianpipes, the “ghost flowers” that need no light to grow, will break through the forest soil. Like mushrooms, with fruiting bodies that are nourished by underground mycelia, these saprophytes absorb their nutrients from a fungus that covers their roots. Receiving an average of about 18 centimeters more annual precipitation than forests east of the Divide, Glacier’s redcedar-hemlock community hoards its moisture. Its dense growth and the surrounding mountain walls inhibit the circulation of drying winds. Mosses and ferns transpire their moisture, which you can feel; place your hand close, and you will sense a coolness like the air exuding from an ice cave. Draped from the tree limbs are long filaments of squawhair and goatsbeard, black and grey lichen strands that flourish in the damp air. Except for the black bear, few large animals inhabit the deep forest. Grizzlies find better forage in meadows or along the forest edge. Since shade discourages shrubby undergrowth, deer and wapiti will search elsewhere for browse. In summer, wapiti, grizzlies, and mule deer bucks tend to wander up into high meadows.