Trip Report by Helen Baker

On March 16, Sally McDermott led a group of 13 on a four-hour loop hike through Lighthouse Park. Together we gazed up – way up – at the Douglas Fir and Red Cedar giants and made stops to look out at the ocean at Eagle Point and Juniper Point. 

Signs of spring were everywhere – bald eagles flying into the treetops with sticks for nest building, salmonberry buds getting ready to burst and skunk cabbage poking up from the mud in the boggy sections. 

Along the way we could hear Pacific Wren singing deep in the forest and the high whistle of an Anna’s Hummingbird, as it dropped in its mating dance. Sally pointed out the rectangular holes chopped into the sides of trees by Pileated Woodpeckers.

Using a knotted cord, Sally measured one of the notable Douglas Firs described in Randy Stoltman’s book. It took two people to stretch the string around its span. She counted out 25 knots – an impressive 25-foot circumference for a tree estimated to be 250 years old. Also impressive was a living stump beside a still-growing Douglas Fir “mother tree”. The bark had grown over the stump and it is kept alive through its underground root connections to other trees. 

Sally McDermott is an active member of the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society, coordinating weed-pulls and participating in bird-counts. She also monitors Bald Eagle nests in the park for the Hancock Wildlife Foundation. Growing up close to Lighthouse Park, she is familiar with every nook and cranny.