But after a week as a volunteer at a conservation research station in Haida Gwaii, I now see forests in a different way.
Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, is an archipelago that lies 600 miles west of the coast of British Columbia. The islands support 4,000 miles of coastal temperate rainforest of spruce, cedar, hemlock and pine. It is also the heartland of the indigenous Haida Nation, a population that includes fishermen, foresters, artists and visitors like me.
The research I worked on is a study of red-breasted sap suckers — black and white birds with bright red heads. To rear their young, they excavate nest cavities in dead standing spruce trees.
Thirty years ago, researchers established 200 "watch trees” on one small island and now enlist volunteers like me to document the parenting behavior of these birds.
During their month-long nesting season, both the females and the males take turns catching insects on the fly and then returning to the nest to feed their cheeping chicks.
At my first vigil, I watched one of the pair pop out of the nesting hole, and the other immediately pop in. Ten minutes later, the mom — or dad — arrived with something small and struggling in its beak. Those feeding switches continued like clockwork, every ten minutes, all day long.
As the week progressed, my perception of the landscape shifted. Instead of the forest being just a set of silent upright trunks, it became a bustling municipality, each tree housing its busy families, its members coming and going with sustenance for their young. Getting home, I realized that that forest is a lot like my own neighborhood, where every day, residents come and go to sustain the intergenerational relationships that keep life flowing.