Significant Trees

Have your observation skills ever been tested?  Our instructor was making a point and showed us this video:

Point taken. I have tried to become more "observant" yet it seems to be such an impossible endeavour.  We are designed to focus on a task and ignore all of the extraneous information.  One of my tasks over the past few weeks has been to "tag" what we have been calling "Significant" trees in the District of Squamish.  The goal is to catalogue and GPS trees that are either substantial in size or that have some unique feature that causes them to stand out.  With this in mind, I started to notice all of the interesting and LARGE trees that we have.  They also tend to be nicely diverse, meaning there are no stands of one species dominating.  Along a trail I will find a random assortment of large trees that are typical of the area.  This is what natural regeneration is about. So far, the big 6 I have found are: Sitka Spruce, Western Red Cedar, Western Hemlock, Black Cottonwood, Douglas-fir and, living up to its name, Big Leaf Maple. ​