Is this normal? A dry ride through the forest

The coastal rainforest, forming a thin line along the coast of North America, so moderate in temperature, makes up for it in its yearly swings in rain.

Summer, especially late summer, is a time of extreme dryness, when the soaking, ever-present cloud of winter rain abutting steep, forested mountain slopes is a thing of memory. Late summer is when mountain bike tires skid through the loose, desiccated upper soil layers. The last time in rained in any significant way is out of recent memory, at least at month prior. A hard sudden stop of the wheels brings a fine plume of talc-like soil in a cloud of smoke, teasing the threat of fire that lurks in the extreme dryness.

It’s amazing that the forest shows little signs of water stress, even as plants back home in the garden droop and pout if not given ample water a few times a week. I imagine plant roots in the dry, dusty soil of the forest below my bike tires. I imagine their atomic sized effort to strip every last possible molecule of water from the thirsty soil. I also imagine the mirroring effort from the soil itself, particles struggling with electrochemical might to hold onto the water.

It’s likely that the signs of water stress are les obvious within the forest, evolved as it is to exist within the wide swings of water availability. Certain spruce trees have begun to lose colour at their very extremities, signaling their thirst with the first curled hints of brown. It’s now, when sunshine is a given, that the deluge of winter is easy to forgot. Some 80% of the yearly precipitation for the coastal forest falls within the winter months. And the total precipitation that falls is huge — a true seasonal deluge of ~1800 mm of rain and snow. Imagine the resilience of the forest and its denizens in weathering this swing.

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