the photos I didn't get to take

I've been sifting, slowly, through my recent photos and am now realising that it's the pictures I didn't take are the most obvious ones.

oh, how green IS that grass over there, eh?

So, here are the photos you will never see:

1. Cathedral Grove. I was convinced, by someone who shall remain nameless, that I didn't really need to take any photos of Cathedral Grove as I'd just taken so very many at Little Qualicum Falls and, really, all trees kinda look the same in photos, right? WRONG. The 1000 year old trees with stumps you can walk through and roots the size of your torso look a wee bit different.

2. Mountain spine. My name for the evenly spaced row of scrawny jackpines that ran along the ridge of one of the mountains we drove past between Port Alberni and Tofino. At the right angle, the ridge was against the sky and the pines stood out, black, like some gigantic dorsal fin remnant. It was very cool.

3. Sun-bleached tree trunks. These were precariously perched on top of large, soilless boulders and cliffs on the shoulder of the road. The roots were there, too, bleached and attempting to cling to the bare rock. Most post-apocalyptic.

Pictures number 2 and 3 were untakable simply due to the highway. There was no where to pull over and take photograph of either of these sites, though they appeared at several points along the drive. Single lane traffic and absolutely no shoulders: just solid rocks or solid forest. The best kind of drive with the best kind of scenery and nothing but my temperamental memory to show for it.