Recent Posts

This page is a subpage of Lichen Camp
(www.nsforestmatters.ca/The Camps/Lichen Camp/Recent Posts)


From Friends of Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area
(Public Facebook Page)


Forests of gratitude

Save Our Old Forests post, Sep 30, 2024

🌳❤️Forests of gratitude to all of the Citizen Scientists, campers, supporters and volunteers who kept Lichen Camp going for over 210 days! And now it’s time to wind things down…

The goal of Lichen Camp was to keep the forest standing while we researched and documented the biodiversity of the area, and to educate both people and government about its extraordinary conservation value.

The forests are still standing around the camp and they have put Goldsmith Lake on the map, literally. Their new map of the 3900 hectare proposed Wilderness Area shows not only the 77 species at risk occurrences they have identified, but also 20 stands of old-growth forest.

Lichen Camp had a lot of support in its efforts to protect the land and keep researching the area. Campers and guests included: Mi’kmaw Grandmothers and youth, lichen hunters, bird watchers, fishers, paddlers, entomologists, mycologists, native plant experts, filmmakers, photographers, painters, playwrights and poets.


Lichen Camp Day 211
Nina Newington, Sep 30, 2024

The loons are still calling in the night at camp. The forest and the lake throb with life. We are a part of this magnificence. It pulses through us. With every breath we share our being with the trees. It is a delight, a gift, a privilege to work to protect the wild. From the tiniest stubble lichen to the grandmother yellow birch, from the people who scheduled campers all these months to the people who visited camp for the first time yesterday, we are all connected.

Yesterday was a full day, with SOOF’s Mycology Workshop in a fungi-friendly intermittent drizzle followed by clearing skies for the celebration potluck at camp.

Dawn is breaking, a squirrel scolding. Time to get up, make coffee, take down camp, bless and thank this place. We’ll be back, frequently.


Lichen Camp Day 209
Nina Newington, Sep 27, 2024

No sooner do we make a new map of the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area than we have fresh points to add! First Lisa Proulx saw a Pine Marten in old forest south of Goldsmith Lake (just in time to make it onto the new map), then Deb Kuzyk saw a Fisher crossing the logging road just north of the lake (too late for the map.)

Now, thanks to a Freedom of Information request, we have learned that a trail cam set up in February by the Wildlife Division of NRR caught both a Fisher and a Marten on camera! It was set up at the edge of one of the official old growth stands west of Goldsmith Lake. The cameras were retrieved in April. That’s where the black and white image of the Marten comes from. (The very clear photos of a Marten and a Fisher were scooped off the internet.)

NRR has been monitoring the populations of both Fisher and Marten for a while. When Lisa reported the Marten sighting to the Wildlife Division, she was told that the Pine (or American) Marten is about to be added to the list of Endangered Species for the whole of Nova Scotia. (Until now only the Cape Breton population was listed.)

In theory, NRR is already treating Marten as endangered in Southwest NS, following a Special Management Plan created for the Cape Breton population. This might limit ‘harvest prescriptions’ to the least damaging ‘High Retention’ cuts in areas where the Marten has been found. Given the size of the Marten’s range (2.6 to 7.8 sq km), now that there is evidence of their presence at two locations around Goldsmith Lake, this could result in a re-evaluation of the remaining harvest plans for the area. None of those plans are currently ‘High Retention’ plans. All involve removing at least 50% of the forest.

Compared to the Special Management Plans for the species at risk lichens we have found, whereby each one is given a 100m buffer, the SMP for Marten seems pretty nebulous. For example, it states, ‘Large Yellow Birch should be left standing wherever possible.’That ‘wherever possible’ is not reassuring.

The best plan is to protect this whole area. Wildlife like the Fisher, the Marten and the Mainland Moose all need substantial areas of uninterrupted old forest. The loss of that habitat is a major reason why their populations have shrunk so drastically. If Goldsmith is protected, the old forests will become old growth, and the younger forests will mature. The reservoirs of biodiversity that have survived in the oldest, least disturbed stands will expand as the habitat around them becomes more complex.

We haven’t seen any Mainland moose (though 80% of the area we want to protect is identified as core habitat for them in their Recovery Plan). A Moose sighting would be the icing on the cake, but we are happy with the Marten and the Fisher. Both need old trees to den in. Martens give birth and nurse their kits 5-6′ up in a tree cavity, only moving them down to ground level when the young are several weeks old. I picture the big hollow yellow birch we have found, sheltering the mother and her young. For me that image makes protecting these old and old-growth forests even more urgent.

One of the privileges of spending so much time at Lichen Camp over the last 30 weeks has been finding many stands of healthy old and old growth forest. I was quite surprised to find the total number of old growth stands within the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is now 20. Twenty! In an area that both WestFor and Minister Tory Rushton started out describing as all managed forest.
Two of those stands have been on the map for decades. The one we identified on the Goldsmith peninsula in August 2023 was added to the official map this past winter. But since then nothing has been added officially even though we know that, for example, the stand shown in pale pink just north of the two dark pink ones on the west side of the lake aced the old growth test NRR uses. NRR’s threshold for hardwood stands is 140. The trees they sampled in this stand came in at an average age of 250. Two hundred and fifty! You would think NRR would be in a hurry to make such a find public.

But no, they have sat on it for almost a year. That’s why we decided to go ahead and show the stands we have identified as old growth on our map.

What we didn’t try to do is to map all the stands we found that probably don’t quite qualify as old growth now but will if they are left alone for another 20 years. There are many more of these than there are stands of old growth and they are, mostly, much larger. Often the old growth stands are next to these areas of old forest. That is part of what makes the area around Goldsmith Lake so valuable from a conservation perspective.

It is quite disturbing, the lack of urgency displayed by NRR. It is great that the Wildlife Division is monitoring Marten and Fisher, good that the Marten have a Special Management Plan and will soon be covered by the Endangered Species Act, but shouldn’t the Forestry Division be eagerly sharing information about the old growth stands they have been assessing? Shouldn’t they be doing everything in their power to work with the Protected Areas Branch of Environment and Climate Change to identify areas that should be protected as soon as possible? Why is it only citizens who seem to get that time is running out and so is the supply of old forests? We can’t afford to ruin any more good habitat with poor forestry.

We must be a voice for the forests.
Msit no’kmaq. All my relations.


Lichen Camp Day 204
Nina Newington, Sep 22, 2024

Yesterday we had a wonderful visit to camp from Mi’kmaw Grassroots Grandmother Dorene Bernard and her cousin Patsy Stephens.

Dorene gave the camp another flag, this beautiful Every Child Matters flag. After sitting and visiting, drinking coffee and eating donuts, talking birds and forests and medicines and much much more, we went down to Goldsmith Lake.

The Water Ceremony was so beautiful and powerful.

The forest along the shore seemed to pulse with the beat of the drum as we sang the Honour Song at the end, some of us standing in the still warm water. When I worry about the fate of this lake and grow frustrated with slow progress in getting it protected, I know I will come back to this experience and draw strength and patience from it.

Wela’lin to Dorene and Wela’lioq to the Mi’kmaq for their strength in surviving colonialism and their extraordinary kindness and generosity. We are all bound by the Peace and Friendship Treaties to protect Mother Earth.


Lichen Camp Day 202
Nina Newington, Sep 20, 2024

“Again I and on behalf of our Original Sovereign Mi’gmaq 7th District Gespegawagi Tribal governing system and our members commend you and colleagues for your sacrifices made to protect Mother Earth and her precious resources.

We are all Treaty people, within our Seven Districts territories, Mi’gmaq or non Mi’gmaq, we are all bound by the Peace and Friendship Treaties to protect Mother Earth and her precious natural resources for the continued survival of our next Seven Generations; Welalieg, (Thank you) for all you do for Mother Earth, In Peace and Friendship, 7th District Chief, Gespegawagi, Gary Metallic Sr.”

This lovely comment in the Peace and Friendship Alliance NS group on our Day 200 post made me think back on the steadfast support our peaceful actions to protect Mother Earth have received from our Mi’kmaw allies.

Tomorrow Mi’kmaw Grassroots a Grandmother Dorene Bernard will do a Water Ceremony at Goldsmith Lake. We will pray for the protection of these lands and waters, as we did at Beal’s Brook during the Last Hope Camp and at Caribou River in Digby County during the Moose Country Blockade.

There are so many calls on Dorene’s time and her work with Survivors of Residential Schools and others is so important, we are deeply grateful that she takes the time to come to the places we are working to protect. It is an honour to participate in these ancient ceremonies.

If you would like to join us tomorrow at 1pm at Goldsmith Lake, please email soof@saveouroldforests.com for protocols and directions.


Lichen Camp Day 200
Nina Newington, Sep 18, 2024

It really has been 200 days. Some of you may have noticed my day numbers have become a bit erratic but, now we have been here so long, they have become easy to figure out again. On Saturday, September 28th it will have been 30 weeks. 210 days. Today being the 18th, it took a calculation requiring no more than my fingers and thumbs to come up with 200.

These 200 days and nights have been an extraordinary opportunity for me and many other campers and visitors to get to know the land around Goldsmith Lake. To know and be known. There are many more eyes on us in the forest than most of us are aware of. Our footsteps dimple the moss, press into the soil. We are received. Loons call wildly in the night. Do they hear us talking? It is a good experiment to consider being the object, not the subject. In other languages, the distinction might not even make sense. English is very noun-y. Mi’kmaq, I’m told, is verb-y.

This afternoon I made a cup of coffee and opened a book a friend loaned me, Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s ‘To Speak for the Trees’. On the second page I read, ‘we find ourselves in a special time. On the one hand, climate change poses the most significant threat to our planet that humanity has ever faced. On the other, we are better equipped than ever before to take on that challenge. To do so, though, we need to understand the natural world as people once did. We need to see all that the sacred cathedral of the forest offers us, and understand that among those offerings is a way to save our world.’

I started to cry, sitting out there on the logging road, coffee in hand. I am a little overwrought, between the big horrors of genocide in Gaza and the local horrors of helicopters raining poison on recovering clearcuts, not to mention the probability of a democratically elected government in this country that is dedicated to undoing what little action has been taken to address climate change and biodiversity loss. I could go on. Most of us do, inside our heads at least.

But sitting on the logging road, reading and crying, it wasn’t grief I was feeling so much as relief. Battered and degraded they may be, but the sacred is strong in our forests. We are protected as well as protecting. These many days have been a journey into reciprocity.


Lichen Camp Day 198
Nina Newington, Sep 16, 2024
More thoughts on the 50-60 year old forest right around camp. This forest has almost certainly experienced several ‘forest removals’ since colonization. Estimates are that almost all this province’s forests have been removed 4-5 times. Removing the trees from a forest over and over depletes the soil. Most of Nova Scotia’s soils, especially in the Southwest, weren’t that great to begin with. Acid rain hasn’t helped. Acidity locks up nutrients in the soil. Softwoods tend to make the soil more acidic. Hardwoods sweeten it.

Nature has a process for building and keeping forest soils. Old growth forests are the amazing storehouse of carbon and biodiversity that they are because the soil has been allowed to develop over long periods, taking in every morsel of fallen organic matter, from the feather a bird dropped to the trunk of an ancient tree.

Clearcutting then spraying a forest goes against every natural process of forest renewal. When storms topple trees, the fallen trees lie on the ground and feed the fungi and insects and slowly return to the earth everything that allowed them to grow. Fires rarely burn down into the soil, especially in the moist Maritimes. Wildfires skip stands and individual trees. The charred trunks remain, as does all the wood ash. No natural process robs the soil of organic matter and fertility the way clearcutting does.

That’s one reason ‘High Production Forestry’ rarely works out as planned. The title is aspirational not accurate.

According to their documents, the way the Department of Natural Resources and Renewable’s plans to address the progressive loss of fertility that is built into clearcut forestry is to replace the nutrients in the soil with chemical fertilizer, the same way industrial agriculture grows corn.

The forestry industry likes the farming analogy. They are tree farming, they claim, ignoring the fact that corn is an annual crop. It sets seed and dies in a single year. The red spruce they plant, on the other hand, are capable of outliving us three times over. Red spruce aren’t even fully mature at the age when most humans die.

The farming analogy is accurate in one way though: industrial agriculture is no more sustainable than industrial forestry. It has been burning through topsoil at such a rate that by some estimates we have only 50 harvests left. It takes a hundred years to build an inch of topsoil. Drenching the soil with glyphosate has not helped. Among other things, glyphosate is an anti-microbial. It kills the microbial life that plays a crucial role in building soil.

The ‘High Production Forestry’ NRR has planned for the forest around lichen camp (and another 185,000 hectares of crown land) specifically includes spraying with glyphosate-based herbicides as well as clearcutting. Pious hopes are expressed that better forms of forest management will evolve but for now, spray away.

Aerial spraying on crown lands ended in 2010 when public funding was no longer available. Are people really going to accept the return of this toxic practice to our public lands?

This year has seen a big increase in the number of camps to stop the aerial spraying of glyphosate on clearcut private land. Camps are spread out around the province now, with local residents preventing spraying on sites near Advocate Harbour and Pugwash in Cumberland County as well as multiple sites in Kings and Annapolis Counties.

The Department of Environment approved the spraying of 1837 hectares of private land across the province this August. If High Production Forestry proceeds as originally planned by NRR, 5000 hectares of crown land will be added each year to the spray total. Industrial forestry is demanding more. So far this year NRR has put forward plans to clearcut over 9,000 hectares of crown land.

The government is clearly nervous about the public’s reaction. Nova Scotians have made no secret of hating both clearcutting and spraying. In their January 2023 High Production Forestry Phase 2 Implementation document, NRR claims repeatedly that biodiversity is now the priority on 90% of crown land. This is their justification for decimating biodiversity on the remaining 10%.

Is it true? Are they prioritizing biodiversity on 90% of crown land? What would that look like?

The first step in prioritizing biodiversity on crown land is to identify which areas will be permanently protected. Meeting the government’s legislated commitment to protest 20% of Nova Scotia’s lands and waters by 2030 will put over 50% of crown lands off limits to any logging, mining or industrial development. Over 330,000 hectares are going to be added to protected areas in the next 6 years. Almost all will come from crown land. For Canada as a whole, and for another 195 countries around the world, the commitment is to protect 30% by 2030.

Instead of helping the Protected Areas Branch of the Department of Environment identify these areas, NRR is busy identifying areas to clearcut and spray. When they aren’t doing that, they are hustling to approve harvest plans to log old forests like those around Goldsmith Lake, forests that are obvious candidates for permanent protection. So much for prioritizing biodiversity.

Sitting here at Lichen Camp, looking at the obscenely wide roadway clearcut through old and not so old forest, studying the High Production Forestry maps NRR is putting out, reading about all the people having to camp out to stop this year’s aerial spraying, it feels almost impossible to imagine a way forward.

But then I look at the beautiful sign Deb Kuzyk painted last week while she was here, taking turns, as so many people have over the last six months, caring for the forest. I think about the many people stopping the spray, peacefully putting their bodies in the way of what damages the earth. I think of so many Indigenous-led actions to protect the lands and the waters. I think of the Indigenous wisdom in the idea that this forest belongs to the next seven generations. Generations of all beings.

I can feel another way. Another way of living in nature, another way of being with each other. It is as far from ‘High Production Forestry’ as it is possible to be. It is as close to the moss and the fungi, the lichens and the trees, the loons and the martens as it is possible to be. It is calling us.


Lichen Camp Day 191
Nina Newington, Sep 12, 2024

The forest right around our camp is not old forest. It is 50 to 60 years old and as close to a softwood monoculture as the forestry industry of the day could make it. It is made up almost entirely of red spruce.

Here and there red maples have sprouted from the stumps left after the area was clearcut. The forest floor is carpeted with moss. Ever more fungi are popping up. In spring it was studded with wildflowers: bunchberry, blue-bead lily, lady slippers. Squirrels scold and Golden-crowned kinglets chitter in the treetops, as they have done since we first set up camp, back before the migratory birds came and went.

It is beautiful, this forest right around camp, but it doesn’t support anything like the variety of life that you find in the old and old growth forests we have been discovering. It began life as an industrial forest. A ‘managed’ forest as the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables likes to describe it. But it is capable of growing out of that straight jacket. Red spruce can live to 250 or 300 years old.

If it is protected from now on as part of the Goldsmiths Lake Wilderness Area, this forest will, over many decades, become more complex and more diverse. It helps that Bowater left so many pockets of old forest. These are storehouses of biodiversity. Nature will mend the torn fabric of life. Climate change will create terrible pressures but nature is powerful.

Leaving this forest alone to heal is not, however, what the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables has in mind for it. Instead, it has been identified as a potential site for ‘High Production Forestry’.

What is ‘High Production Forestry’? It is clearcutting and spraying. The same old playbook: cut down and haul away the forest, plant with softwood seedlings then, in a couple of years, come in with a helicopter and spray to kill off the hardwoods that have regrown, as well as all the other broadleaf plants, frogs, toads, salamanders, and the microbial life of the soil. Then stand back while the soil, rutted up and exposed to the sun, moss shriveled and gone, releases the carbon it stored. The forest, which had only recently begun to suck in and store significant amounts of carbon after the last time it was clearcut, is gone. In its place is a carbon emitting wasteland that may possibly return to storing carbon in 20-30 years. Or it may not.

If we want a livable planet, we have to change the way we treat the forests in this province, starting with the ones the government has control over. Crown lands. Public lands. Stolen lands. Perhaps the best starting place for change is to say, ‘This Forest Belongs to the Next 7 Generations.’

Msit no’kmaq. All my relations.


Lichen Camp Day 187
Nina Newington, Sep 7, 2024
A very rainy day at camp, perfect for sitting in bag, sipping tea, reading, thinking. When it rains this hard it is a little drippy in the tent, even with the foam pipe insulation we slipped over the metal frame. Before the insulation it was a lot drippy. The cable ties were another improvement, added soon after to keep the insulation in place when it’s windy.

We’ve been through far worse in this tent. And always there has been a joyful spirit at camp. It was like that at Last Hope too, and in far tenser situations in the past. Choosing to take direct action on behalf of the earth, to put your body where your mouth is, in the company of others doing the same, often involves a willingness to sacrifice comfort and convenience. As it turns out, it is extraordinarily rewarding. I mean rewarding emotionally, spiritually, not just morally. There is self-respect to be found in doing what you believe is right and necessary, but this feeling goes beyond that. There is a sense of community and camaraderie, of mutual reliance and usefulness, of kindness and care and courage.

This mix of feelings is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.”

“(D)isaster doesn’t sort us out by preferences; it drags us into emergencies that require we act, and act altruistically, bravely, and with initiative, in order to survive or save the neighbors, no matter how we vote or what we do for a living. The positive emotions that arise in those unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding.”

Yes to all of that from experiences camped out protecting nature, even though she is talking about the big disasters: earthquakes, explosions, hurricanes, 9/11.

“(A)long with purposefulness, immediacy, and agency, (ties) also give us joy – the startling, sharp joy I found in accounts of disaster survivors. These accounts demonstrate that the citizens any paradise would need – the people who are brave enough, resourceful enough, and generous enough – already exist. The possibility of paradise hovers on the cusp of coming into being, so much so that it takes powerful forces to keep such a paradise at bay. If paradise now arises in hell, it’s because in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.”(7)

Reading this in camp today, I think of the photographs of people all around the province over the last few days, camping out on or next to clearcuts that have been approved by our government for aerial spraying with a poison powerful enough to kill all the broad-leafed plants as well as every frog, toad or salamander. Sucked down into the roots of the young hardwood trees it is designed to kill, it damages the complex web of life within the soil. It coats the berries and fungi wildlife and people eat at this time of year. It travels downhill into streams and lakes.

For all these people – and their numbers are growing – from Advocate Harbour and Pugwash to Young’s Cove and Victory and Victoria Harbour – the imminent threat of a helicopter spraying forest land in their communities is an emergency. People set aside the plans we all have, take time off work, risk arrest to say no.

There is such joy and strength in that coming together.

Many of us understand that we are in the midst of a vastly larger emergency: nature loss and climate breakdown are upon us now. And yet it seems as a society we are waiting for catastrophe before we can heed Greta Thunberg’s words: “Act as if your house is on fire — because it is.”

After 9/11, people in the US wanted to come together, to make a difference, to express the kinship they felt in the face of that emergency. Asked what people could do, then President George W. Bush told them to go shopping.

Systems do change, and the current system, based on perpetual growth and limitless extraction from nature, is going to change. Will it change before we in the rich world have destroyed the benign and stable climate and natural systems of our only home?

How do we define an emergency? What is enough for people to take action? To come together and get in the way of what damages the earth. To come together to care for each other and the earth. To act as if we are all a part of nature – because we are.

Every place where people decide to take action on behalf of nature is a node of change. A place to experience the joy and love and strength of taking action. Staying home, wringing your hands and despairing is a waste of time and we are out of time. Choose a place to act. Others will join you. Do what you can, peacefully, honourably.

Thoughts from a rainy day at Lichen Camp…


Lichen Camp Day 183
Nina Newington, Sep 2, 2024

Happy Labour Day! Six months ago today we set up camp when it became clear that holds on logging in the forest west of Goldsmith Lake had been lifted. It’s been amazing, all the work and fun that has gone into building the case for protecting the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Research and education — the goals of the camp — go hand in hand. When they take you into old forests like the ones around Goldsmith Lake, joy and reverence and serenity come along too.

As part of SOOFSTOCK last weekend it was delightful to watch the people who had signed up for the Forest Walk with Donna Crossland and Bob Bancroft walking into the stand of old growth yellow birch and sugar maple we had identified a month earlier. Not many people in Nova Scotia these days have the chance to spend time in old growth forests. Those that remain are often hard to reach.

As with any new landscape, it takes time to learn to see it. To see the big old trees but then too to begin to see the ripple in the forest floor, the cavities, the sign of a long ago fire in the exposed middle of a huge maple. With guides like Donna and Bob, you begin to understand more of what you are seeing. And then you see more.
Reading the history of a forest is a whole new kind of literacy for many of us. It involves more than the analytic brain. Becoming immersed in the past and present experiences of a forest calls for using all one’s senses. It invites an intuitive openness. We are reading poetry as well as science. The whole is far more complex than we can understand, and we are a part of the whole, kin with the forest.
Msit no’kmaq
All my relations


Lichen Camp Day 180
Nina Newington, Aug 31, 2024
Yesterday brought two wonderful visitors to camp plus many homegrown goodies and a different angle on the forest we are all working to protect. Thank you Steph and Malachi.
Oh, and the empty box in the photo contained the hedgehog mushrooms Malachi foraged in the forest next to camp while Steph and I took part in a zoom meeting. I ate them for supper and they were gooood.
And, because it started to rain and the fog rolled in — not ideal conditions for drone shots — they’ll be back. All that and a great morning in a part of the forest I hadn’t visited before. More on that in another post. Life is good.


Lichen Camp, Day 174
Eleanor Wynn Kure
Aug 23, 2024
Grateful to be completely at peace in the silence of the forest in Mi’kma’ki, near Goldsmith Lake. Absolutely lovely here; and looking forward to a tour of the Old Growth forest that is part of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area! This is a beautiful place, with species at risk lichens and wildlife habitat. Important to protect…so thankful to the citizen scientists at Lichen Camp for showing us how important it is here.
Looking forward to the tour tomorrow with Bob Bancroft and Donna Crossland, and so nice to see Joan Baxter (who is here to report) and Nina Newington…. 4 of my heroes. Folks are also enjoying SOOFSTOCK 2024 this weekend! What a powerhouse of great people who care about forests. Tomorrow I’ll post photos of the old growth!!
For more info, follow Friends of Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area
And Save Our Old Forests ❤️🌲🌳💚


Lichen Camp Day 170
Nina Newington, Aug 19, 2024
I keep thinking about the experience of finding old growth forest. I’ve had the good fortune to do this several times in the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Stepping into a stand of old growth for the first time, there’s a feeling. Of recognition I think. Some sense of wholeness alongside the excitement of discovery. It comes from the ground under your feet and it’s in the air. I try to take a moment. To greet the forest and be greeted.

But I’m already looking around, eyes picking out big trees, those thick columnar trunks, bare mostly until high up in the canopy.

Donna Crossland pointed out once that the really old trees often feel as if they are on a plinth. You walk up to them. It’s true. I love to photograph the bases of these old trees. And then I stand close, taking a shot up the trunk to the crown.

When I look at the photos I’ve taken in the old growth forests we have found, they are almost all of trees (with a few lichens thrown in.) It’s hard not to focus on the trees. Old trees inspire reverence in many of us and they’re beautiful. It’s a lot harder to snap good shots of the ripples in the ground. And yet that pit and mound topography is as good an indicator of old growth as old trees. It only shows up in old forests where generations of trees have fallen and rotted in place.

Here in Nova Scotia those ripples are quite often oriented in the same direction. People skilled at reading the forest floor can detect the track of a hurricane that stormed through the forest a hundred or more years ago, trees toppling in the same direction, roots tearing free of the ground. In time those upended root balls rot and settle, creating the mounds, while the hollows where the roots used to be make the pits.

Wind is the main ‘natural disturbance regime’ in Nova Scotia’s forests. In the boreal forest that spans Canada it is fire, but here, on an almost island stuck out in the North Atlantic, it is wind that stops most trees getting as old as they are capable of getting genetically.
“Turns out,” writes Zack Metcalfe in his article on Old-Growth Forests in Rural Delivery (October 2022), “not all forests behave like those of the Pacific Northwest. Some do, indeed, climb for the heavens, and maintain their colossal characteristics for thousands of years at a time. But many have adapted to outbreaks of fires or pests, enduring the frequent loss of trees without missing an ecological beat. Others thrive where harsh winds prevent any tree from fully maturing – the forest’s ecological processes continuing for thousands of years, though few trees live longer than a century.”

It was that last sentence, half-remembered, that took me back to the article. The forest can be far older than any of the trees growing in that forest. So long as the trees that are blown over are left to rot in place, the ecological continuity of the forest is not broken.

Natural disturbances, whether wind or fire or native pests like the spruce budworm, almost never kill all the trees in a stand, and they never remove the dead. Nor do they crush the soil. They do not destroy the ecological processes that develop over thousands of years. Humans with machines bent on extracting ’resources’ do that. Humans like me who have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. But we can learn.

The forest speaks if we are willing to listen. And the tale it tells is strange and wonderful, of a web of life that wraps around us, infinitely complex, connecting what is above and below, within and without, the visible and the invisible.


Lichen Camp Day 160

“A story of being knocked over, losing almost everything, but growing back up anyway, crooked, quirky and Beautiful. Supporting so much life.”

Nina Newington, Aug 8, 2024
Gathering evidence to show why the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area should be protected is definitely easier with Lichen Camp in place. Rather than planning a day long expedition to make the drive in and out worthwhile, you can go for “an intelligent meander” for a couple of hours. This makes it possible to check out many more areas for old and old growth forest.

Yesterday, for example, 3km or so from camp, I found yet more definitely old, probably old-growth forest (by the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables’ definition.) It’s not as definitively old growth to my eye as the stand I found last week but it has most of the characteristics. The average age of the old trees in there is a bit lower, I would guess. But the type of forest – Mixed Wood rather than Tolerant Hardwood in Old Growth Forest Policy speak – also has a lower age threshold to meet: 125 years rather than 140.

Where last week’s old-growth stand was small – 1.6ha – this week’s is much larger – 19.2ha. It too is north west of Corbett Lake. The whole stand is on crown land but only part of it is within the boundaries of the proposed Wilderness Area. The rest of it will be protected as part of the Old Growth Forest Policy if it meets NRR’s criteria.

Within the proposed wilderness area, between these two stands, are many more that should be checked out, based on NRR’s own maps. It is quite confusing to cross-reference these with the old Bowater map. The Bowater map shows the 19.2 ha stand of old forest I found yesterday as having been cut but it doesn’t give a date. On the ground it is clear that it has not been cut in the last 100 years.
NRR’s Provincial Landscape Viewer forest stand maps for the area carry a lot of shorthand data. It can seem quite confusing. I’ve spelled out what the strings of initials stand for in the caption. A stand is a neighborhood of trees that is determined to be different to the adjoining neighborhood, usually because of the mix of different species of trees that live there or the height of most of the trees in that stand. These features reflect differences in soil and moisture conditions as well as history. A neighborhood of trees that was bulldozed (clearcut) is not going to be 13 metres tall even 60 years later (unless they are poplars…). Buildings can go up quickly, trees take time. It takes a long time for both forest stands and neighbourhoods to develop character and complexity but that isn’t captured in these maps. The stand details do give you hints though on where to go looking for old and old growth forest.

Check out the screenshot of the forest stands between last week’s old growth discovery, outlined in red in the upper right-hand corner, and this week’s, outlined in orange, bottom left. Don’t worry about all the letters, just look at the height given for each stand. These range from 2m to 16m. There are quite a lot of stands ranging from 2m to 8m and a lot more between 13m and 16m. There are none between 8m and 13m. Taking a rough tally of the areas of the stands, within the whole screenshot, about 40% of the 214ha are under 8m, about 60% are over 13m. Within the boundary (not shown) of the proposed wilderness area, the proportions are 35% under 8m, 65% over 13m. That means 60 to 65% of the forest is most likely over 80 years old.

Those stand maps are based on aerial photographs taken in 2012 and interpreted by NRR. They are not terribly accurate, but they do very roughly coincide with Bowater maps which show almost all the cutting they did in this area was in the early 1990s. The province bought back the Bowater lands in 2012. The Harvest Plan Map Viewer introduced in 2016 does not show any harvesting in this area after 2012.
NRR has used the old Bowater map as evidence to support the claim that the forests in the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area are ‘managed’ forest, not old, untouched forest, and are therefore not worth protecting. Minister Rushton is clinging to this claim even though NRR’s maps and even Bowater’s map do not support this claim.

On the South Mountain where clearcutting ran rampant on crown and private land from the 1990s to 2022, it is quite extraordinary to find the amount of old and old-growth forest we are documenting. We know that NRR has more up to date maps incorporating recent LiDAR data, maps that score all the forests in the province according to how likely they are to be old-growth, but they have not made these maps available to the public. It seems likely these maps would undercut Minister Rushton’s dismissal of the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. In the meantime we will keep going out into the forests, seeing what we see, reporting it to NRR whether or not they bother to reply. It is no hardship at all to spend time in these beautiful forests. They bring balm to the soul, strength to the spirit. The bond grows deeper.


Lichen Camp Day 154
Nina Newington, Swimming in the rain yesterday, the air pearly, so many greens along the shore where the forest steps down to the water. Dark geometry of Spruce, lighter notes of Birch and Maple. Wind carved Pines stand sentinel at lake’s edge.

Soon enough thought returns. This beautiful Wabanaki forest, leafless when we set up camp five months ago. Five months to the day from snow to swimming, wood stove to screen tent. The forest still stands along that logging road, and we know so much more. Know and feel.
Every species at risk we have identified — and we are now up to 68 occurrences spread out across the proposed Wilderness Area – every one represents hours in the woods, examining bark, peering into the exposed heartwood of old trees. It never becomes rote because to look closely is to see more: slime molds and spiders; tiny fungi, growing inside a tree; a moth, snoozing; beetles and barnacle lichens. In every old tree an astonishment of life, some of it looking back at you.

Blinking, you emerge to galls on leaves; extravagant mosses; the twitter of Golden-crowned Kinglets in the treetops, companions from winter into summer.

Swimming back to shore, thinking about love and knowledge, how through attention both grow. Thinking then of shalan joudry almost singing the word for Spruce to the youth who came to meet the oldest forest we have found, to greet the Grandmother Yellow Birch and the endangered Black Ash. The Mi’kmaw word for Spruce, said shalan, is the word for green. Kawatkw. Knowledge and love embedded in language.

There are Yellow Birch here that were seedlings in 1650. They grew in forest soil fed by a web of mycelia established long before Europeans set foot on the continent, a web developed over the millennia since the last Ice Age scoured this land, tumbling boulders, scraping out lakes, dumping sand to form drumlins like the one where the Grandmother Birch grows. Said shalan, this is a land of Yellow Birch. Nipnoqan.
Back on shore, dressed, watching a loon glide through the grey water, I feel it, the extraordinary privilege of being in this place, this moment. To have come to recognise old growth forest by the feeling of wholeness as you step into it, as I did the other day east of Goldsmith Lake, closer to Corbett. I wonder again what names they had for these lakes, the L’nu, the people of this land, before the surnames of European men were appended to them. Names rooted in observation; in relationship; in reciprocity. To care for the forest is to be cared for. We are not separate.


Lichen Camp Day 146
Nina Newington,Jul 25, 2024
There are these odd moments of calm. Water glassy, loon gliding towards you, as if everything has yet to happen.

And yet and yet Jasper is burning. July 21st was the hottest day in Earth’s recorded history. Recorded by us humans, that is.

A terrible storm is upon us, but out on the lake a solitary loon glides. A canoe then, paddles dipping. A swimmer examines lichen on rocks out in the water. Blue headed vireos sing in the forest.

It’s all true, the obscene slash of the logging road, blueberries ripening among rubble and broken limbs.

We are not separate. What wounds nature, wounds us. What heals nature, heals us.

Last night in a theatre among imagined trees, languages wove — French, Korean, English — like the mycelia that connect tree to tree, sending messages, sharing nutrients. Are humans merely a blight? Fleas for the Earth to shake off? We want to do better, so many of us.

So it is to wake up at camp, flag of the 7 traditional districts of Mi’kma’ki flapping in the breeze overhead, the breeze that has sprung up this morning. There are things to do, yes, a broken pallet to replace, a post to write, more forest to explore. But there is also being. Resting in the moment. This tent, this road, these birds, this life.


Lichen Camp Day 136
Nina Newington, Jul 15, 2024
When it’s really hot, research that involves paddling becomes quite compelling. That’s how come four of us set out in kayaks the other day for the peninsula in Goldsmith Lake where, last August, we first encountered massive hemlocks and yellow birch as well as red and sugar maples on the east facing slope. In the months since then, at our request, DNRR assessed that slope and found the hardwood stand there met their criteria for old growth forest. The 4.2ha stand shows up now on the Provincial Landscape Viewer map as old growth and is protected from logging. Unfortunately DNRR didn’t assess the two adjoining stands we asked them to look at back then, the ones where most of the hemlocks are growing, so we thought we should come back and take another look. We also thought we should have a swim before getting down to serious lichen hunting…

The swim was delicious and so was the immediate discovery of a third Frosted Glass Whiskers lichen in a well placed old red maple. Well placed because (assuming our identification is confirmed) it sits exactly midway between the two we discovered last year. The 100 m buffer it gets under the Province’s Special Management Plan for this species at risk effectively completes the protection from logging for this little 2.4 ha stand.

After lunch we split up into two teams and explored more of this lovely forest, forest that Bowater’s map shows as having all been clearcut in 1971-1972. Or at least that’s how DNRR seems to have interpreted those old maps. Minister Rushton has told our MLA repeatedly, when asked about protecting the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area, “My staff tell me it is managed forest and that’s not changing.” Evidence to the contrary be damned. Would he be swayed if he came out to the peninsula and took a look for himself? Wouldn’t it be nice to get out of the office?


Lichen Camp Day 133
Karen Achenbach, July 12, 2024
For the last couple of years, I’ve been joining the group of citizen scientists combing through the forest collecting evidence that the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area is well worth protecting. Pristine lake, more old growth forest than previously thought, species at risk, species of lichen not documented previously in the Maritimes. The amount of biodiversity documented has been impressive. But while staying at Lichen Camp, I found you can notice so much just staying in one spot. Even if it is on a logging road! Besides many species of plants, I observed busy chattering juncos, insistent ovenbirds, several sweet-songed warblers. And I didn’t realize that my favourite song bird, the hermit thrush, also makes a fairly annoying squawk, especially first thing in the morning! The resident white admiral butterfly was good company for much of the day. Oh yes, and deerflies, of course! I also had a visit from a lovely gentleman traveling by on a buggy and we talked about the area and the various trails that are used through here. We see quite a few ATVs coming through, with a smile and a wave, and my visitor informed me that there will be over 100 on Sunday July 14th as part of the Bridgetown BASH. What fun!

And then for a swim with the damselflies at the lovely secluded beach at the lake. Very peaceful and refreshing on a warm July day.


Lichen Camp Day 127
Nina Newington, Jul 6, 2024
As word spreads about the camp and our work to protect this area, we get an ever more interesting mix of visitors, from Antonija Livingstone, performance artist living in France, to Haeweon Yi from South Korea, PhD candidate and Climate Theatre person, to Keith Eggers, mycologist and retired professor, surveying fungi in some of the old growth forest here, to two members of the Southwest Paddlers Association and their canoes, come to check out the pristine lake they’ve heard about, to Carman Kerr, our MLA, and his constituent assistant, Evan Fairn.

For these last two we had planned a hike into the 9.2 ha stand of old growth forest that lies between camp and the lake. We always take a slightly different route in, just to see what we see. We paid our respects to the grandmother yellow birch, along the way encountering a very large white ash, many ancient maples and ground so pit and moundy it rolls like a rough sea. Your feet feel the history of the land and weather. Trees rising, falling, rotting, nourishing. Seedlings biding their time in the shade, waiting for a hurricane or just for an individual’s demise to open a hole in the canopy, for the sun to reach down toward the forest floor. Meanwhile, down in the dark soil, networks of communication between fungi and roots flourish as they have for hundreds of millions of years, networks of exchange and reward, seduction and mutual benefit.

Somehow at Lichen Camp, symbiosis is always the topic. We can’t keep destroying nature for profit. Parasites that kill their hosts don’t last long. There are ways to coexist that are mutually beneficial. Examples abound if we are willing to see them. That’s a big if for societies based on competition, control and domination. But wherever you look there are other ways of being. Like weeds growing in cracks in the asphalt, other ways survive. And as the ‘weeds’ grow, the cracks widen.


Lichen Camp Day 123
Haeweon Yi, July 4, 2024
Endless bird songs gave me so much joy. The visitors and feathery friends of Goldsmith Lake include Ovenbirds, Common Loons, Hermith Thrushes, Common Grackles, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, Blue-headed Vireos, Red-eyed Vireos, Black-throated Green Warblers, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Red-breasted Nuthatches, American Robins, and Hummingbirds (just in 24 hours!)🪶

I had a short morning walk to check on some fungi🍄‍🟫 There were little brown mushrooms at every step on the moss! Always check the fallen trees because it’s glorious season for slime molds! Check the beautiful red Stemonitis👀 Mosquitoes swarmed at even the briefest of stops, making it difficult to take photos. But I wanted to share how this microscopic world is mesmerising and full of wonder and joy! There are so many layers of the universe in this forest, sometimes too small for human eyes, but all connected.

The world ‘symbiosis’ was first coined in 1877 by the biologist and botanist, Albert Bernhard Frank, to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens. By having a word to describe this unique relationship and shape of living, we can talk and share more about what it is like to live together with other beings. Lichen Camp is built on hearts of so many wonderful people who care about the symbiotic way of living. Many thanks to everyone who filled the July schedule!



Lichen Camp Day 122

Lisa Proulx, July 2, 2024
My friend Debbie from Tennessee just arrived on Friday and agreed to come camp with me on Sunday! An avid kayaker, she paddled Goldsmith Lake with us almost every week last summer, surveying and measuring trees…so eager to learn about the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area’s special qualities. So many different people are willing to lend a hand in whatever way they can to help us protect this pristine lake and the surrounding areas of old forest.

It was so nice to have families camping at the landing on the lake for the weekend. A few people on ATVs cruised by and waved. There is a community paddle scheduled for July 21st.

There are still trout in the lake to entice anglers. As our world gets busier and crazier, we need more places like this to unwind and reconnect with nature and each other, in our own ways.

After the Firefly Light-show, the sound of gentle raindrops on the roof lulled us to sleep. Birdsong roused us from sleep Monday morning.

It felt good to be here on Canada Day away from the hubbub of celebration, quietly enjoying and appreciating the natural beauty of our land. 🍁


Lichen Camp Day 116
Nina Newington, June 25, 2024
Rain and cooler temperatures have been a relief. There’s nothing like camping on a logging road with forest to either side and a clearcut nearby to clarify how important forests are for regulating temperatures — and how poor forestry practices increase fire risk.

Thursday June 20th was pretty damned hot. Too hot to want to hike into the old growth forest west of the lake. Getting into the lake was a lot more appealing. But on the way we used a hand-held laser thermometer to take a couple of readings. The first was just 5m into fairly young spruce forest. It was shady enough for moss to cover the forest floor. Aimed at a sunlit patch of moss, the thermometer read 29.3C.

Five metres off the road into the neighbouring clearcut, the thermometer aimed at a patch of now brown, dried up moss read 55.9C
The surface temperature of the dead vegetation in the clearcut was actually hotter than the dirt surface of the logging road which read 44.3C.

If we had gone deeper into the forest, into old natural forest rather than the 50 year old post-clearcut managed softwood forest, it is likely that the temperature at the forest floor would have been even cooler, but we didn’t. We went swimming instead.

It’s pretty obvious that when you clearcut a forest, the sunlight and wind dry out the vegetation that grew up in what used to be a shady forest. The whole area becomes a tinder box. The private land just north east of camp that was clearcut last winter is a prime example of that.

Modified versions of clearcuts — such as those currently passing for ‘ecological forestry’ on public land — create similar conditions. By removing too much of the forest — at least 50% in all but two of the approved ‘prescriptions’ — they let in too much sun and wind for the forest floor to remain the cool green oasis that it was. You only have to look at the ‘Shelterwood’ cut to the west near Tupper Brook to see what kind of shelter is left, but that’s for another post.


Lichen Camp Day 111
Nina Newington, June 20, 2024
Nighthawks called in the dusk around camp last night, peent – peent – peent, hunting mosquitoes, I imagine. These were certainly plentiful. A flotilla found its way into the tent. By day they seem mild compared to the deer flies (horse flies? moose flies??) but at night those little whiners…

Still the nighthawks need to eat too, and all the aerial insectivores — swallows and swifts as well — are in trouble, so all praise to the insects. May they be plentiful and thank goodness for screen tents.

For screen tents and Dick Fox, who arrived late morning with a gift of ice and homemade rhubarb lemonade and the sighting of a young bear. Dick who has lived his whole life in this area and used to ride his bicycle to Goldsmith Lake as a teenager. Dick who caught strings of trout in Corbett Lake before the power company damned Bloody Creek.

We sit in the breeze in the screen tent on the last day of spring, Francine in her 40s, me in my 60s, Dick in his 70s. We drink iced lemonade and enjoy each other‘s company on a warming planet with dwindling ecosystems and the vast uncertainties. Francine goes for a swim in the lake, returns reporting turtles. Later I saw three, all painted, so beautiful, so precisely themselves. As are we all, here at another hinge in the year, the longest day, threshold of summer.

Sometimes all you can do is to allow it all: the nighthawks, the lemonade, the logging road slashed through the forest. Here it is. Here we are.


Adventures in Maine!
Admin, June 17, 2024
Citizen Scientists Lisa Proulx, Ashlea Viola and Ben Kendrick traveled to the Eagle Hill Institute in Maine to attend the week-long Calicioid (stubble) lichen seminar hosted by Dr. Steven Selva. It was a busy week of learning, hiking, exploring, and sharing knowledge.

The seminar included a field trip to Great Wass Island where the group learned how to hunt for stubble specimens that grow on bark. There were a few distractions involving a coral lichen (found by Ben), Cole’s possible stubble on a rock, Ben’s other discovery of a Powdered Foot Soldier and some ice cream on the way back to the Institute. The next day was a long one spent in the lab (until 10pm!) learning how to prepare specimens and work with microscope to interpret results. Lisa found an albino stubble lichen!

There was another field trip to Tunk Mountain Trailhead on Day 5 of lichen school. Lisa was pretty excited about the trip saying “We’re headed to a new habitat today for another field trip. Steve is working on getting us to find more stubbles on the bark (corticolous) and branches of trees…they are so tiny! They even grow on old Spruce resin (resinicolous)!” The trip was another fun day, followed by some more lab time (until 10pm!) keying out the specimens. Lab work can be long and frustrating, but Dr. Selva is a patient teacher and with his help to interpret the results from the microscope and UV tests one of the stubbles was identified as Calicium parvum which is less than 1mm tall and grows on bark.

Thank you to everyone that donated to help send Lisa, Ashlea and Ben to Lichen School! Not only was this a great learning opportunity for them, but they will be bringing back their knowledge and sharing it with others! Lisa’s already planning a trip “to Goldsmith Lake to see what new stubble lichens we might find, now that we know how to look!”. We can’t wait to see what you find!!


Lichen Camp Day 106
Nina Newington, June 15, 2024
Lichen Camp Day 106
So here’s a question.
If you’re a government department and part of your job is to protect endangered species and you have amended your harvest plans in order to protect a bunch of species at risk that a group of citizen scientist identified in areas you had approved for logging, and you’ve even gone beyond just putting in 100 metre buffers and have added in some biodiversity corridors so you’ve reduced the area available for logging by 40%, after you have done all this and scaled back your plans from 252 hectares to 138, why wouldn’t you take those plans and show them to the citizen scientists and say,
‘Could you check the areas we think that we can still harvest and make sure that you don’t find more species at risk there because we really don’t want to harm them? It’s part of our job to protect them and you seem to be able to find them so we would really appreciate your help.’

That’s not what happened. The department kept those amended plans secret and when the citizen scientists called to ask if the harvest plans were still on hold (the way they had been for over a year) the resource manager who used to respond promptly stopped responding at all. The PR team in the minister’s office dished out some word salad and quietly, to the south, an old logging road was widened and smoothed. It looked a lot like the holds had been lifted and logging was imminent. The citizen scientists filed a Freedom of Information Request but that would take time and time was what the forest didn’t have. So the citizen scientists went to work searching the original harvest plan areas. They didn’t know, of course, which areas were still scheduled to be logged and which were not. But they started looking again in all the places they hadn’t looked before and they found more and then more and they reported them all, the species at risk, to the department and the department said thank you.

After thirty days the documents came from the Freedom of Information request and lo and behold, there were those harvest plans, amended in November. Pity we didn’t know, said a citizen scientist. Pity they didn’t tell us, said another. Pity they didn’t ask for our help, said yet another. They looked at each other. Well they didn’t, said the first, finally.
The citizen scientists kept doing what they could until they had found so many species at risk in the parts where logging was still allowed that it began to seem silly. Surely, said the citizen scientists to each other, they can see now that this is not a place to log at all. This is a place to protect. Let’s email the resource manager and ask about these plans. And so they did. And guess what?
He didn’t reply.


Birding by Ear workshop (SOOF)
Nina Newington, June 13, 2024
Early Saturday morning the participants of the Birding by Ear workshop were fortunate enough to hear the song of the Species at Risk Olive-sided flycatcher (Quick! Free Beer!) in the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. Not only did almost everyone in the workshop document the observation in Merlin, but several participants were able to confirm the bird visually. This was the second recording and observation of an Olive-sided flycatcher in the same area 10 days apart. It’s pretty likely that there is a nest nearby.

Many thanks to all those that came out bright and early on Saturday, and to Julie Palmer and Bonnie McOrmond for sharing their knowledge and love of birds. Learning how to identify birds by their songs is a great skill to add to your citizen science toolkit. At this time of year when the trees are fully leafed out it can be very difficult to observe birds only by sight.

We also learned that every bird has a preferred habitat. Some like the Ovenbirds (Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!) nest on the ground, and others like the Blackburnian warbler (SOOF logo!) are only found high up in the canopies. Older forests, like the ones we explored on Saturday June 8 at the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area provide a variety of habitats.
Over the course of the two-hour workshop participants recorded and observed the following 30 species: Blue-headed vireo, Northern Parula, Ovenbird, Hermit thrush, Swainsons thrush, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Red-eyed Vireo, Black-throated green warbler, Cedar waxwings (4), Palm warbler, Magnolia warbler, Ruby-throated hummingbird, Black-and-white Warbler, Blackburnian warbler (SOOF logo!), Hairy woodpecker, Least flycatcher, Winter wren, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Black-throated blue warbler, Northern waterthrush, Veery, American redstart, Spotted sandpiper, American robin (2), Blue jay (2), Common grackle, Canada geese (8.), Black-capped chickadee (3) Dark-eyed junco and of course the star of the show (Quick! Free Beer!) the Olive-sided flycatcher!

What’s your favourite bird song?


Municipality of the County of Annapolis support for Goldsmith Lake Widerness Area
SOOF Admin June 12, 2024
“Dear Minister Rushton,
Municipality of the County of Annapolis is writing in support of the Save Our Old Forests (SOOF) Association’s bid to have the Beal Brook and Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Areas located in Annapolis County identified as candidates for protection.”
– Alex Morrison, Warden, Municipality of the County of Annapolis
Many thanks to Warden Morrison, Deputy Warden Redden and all of the Councilors of the Municipality of the County of Annapolis for their support of the proposals to protect Beals Brook and Goldsmith Wilderness Areas. The support also includes the request for a moratorium on all forestry, road building and industrial activities in the proposed Wilderness Areas while they are in the process of being designated for protection.


Lichen Camp Day 100
Nina Newington, June 10, 2024
Yes, it’s been 100 days and we’re still going strong, providing a base for forest protection, research and education. People traveling a distance to take part in SOOF’s Birding by Ear workshop this weekend, for example, were able to camp here the night before, ready for that 7:45am start.

Later in the day on Saturday a whole family stopped by to learn more about the camp and the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. They were excited to hear about the lake itself — a rare pristine lake that has never been dammed and has no cottage development around it — and the old growth forest surrounding it. When we tell people how many species at risk occurrences we have identified – 65, as of yesterday – they find it hard to believe that the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables might still be planning to allow logging in this area. We do too.

At some point most visitors to camp ask how long we expect to be here. The answer is simple: as long as it takes, but it is getting a bit silly. On March 2nd, when we set up camp, citizen scientists had reported 35 confirmed species at risk occurrences in the proposed wilderness area. Those were the result of 17 months of searching. In the past 100 days we have added 29 more.
We haven’t yet reported the latest species at risk, an Olive-sided Flycatcher. It was first heard by Corbett Lake 10 days ago by experienced birders Bonnie McOrmond and Julie Palmer, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just passing through. It was heard again and seen during the Birding By Ear workshop they led yesterday.

The government has committed to a Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy. We are more than willing to work with both the departments charged with protecting 15% of our province by 2026 and 20% by 2030. A couple of weeks ago the Citizen Scientists of Southwest Nova Scotia updated the proposal to protect the Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area. When we submitted the original proposal to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change in November 2022 we had only identified 7 species at risk occurrences. Now (it bears repeating) we are at 65. This time we invited Tim Halman to come and see the area for himself. Perhaps it is time to follow up.
If you want to help, please drop Tim Halman a line at minister.environment@novascotia.ca telling him that you support protecting the Goldsmiths Lake Wilderness Area and asking him to include it in the 15% that will be protected by March 2026. Bcc your letter to soof@saveouroldforests.ca to help keep track of how many letters are sent.


Lichen Camp Day 97
Nina Newington, June 6, 2024
Yesterday we had the privilege of guiding a group of Mi’kmaw youth from L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation) into some of the oldest old growth forest we have found west of Goldsmith Lake. We first encountered this hardwood forest last November when we took a group of people on a hike to meet the forests of Goldsmith Lake. We hoped there might be old growth on top of the hill, but we had no idea what we would find. The massive Yellow Birch at the top of the slope was a marvelous surprise for all of us, including the guides. The core samples DNRR has taken in the hilltop stand are all well over 200 years old with an average age of 250.
We led the youth on a slightly different route and were amazed again, this time by how quickly we found ourselves in old growth forest. There were red maple and yellow birch over 80cm in diameter at breast height at the foot of the slope and all the way up, not just in the stand on top of the hill. Before we left the trail to reach this slope though, we paused and asked the students to describe what they were seeing in the young forest that surrounded us. shalan joudry — who organized this trip for the students from the Bear River First Nation high school — taught all of us the names of some of the trees and the meaning of the names. Stoqn, the word for balsam fir, for example, is the root word for the colour green in Mi’kmaw.
As soon as we crossed the swamp, you could feel the difference in the forest. What is it about old growth forest that allows one to identify it by feel? It’s not all about how big trees are or how old, it is about the relationship of the trees to each other. The space between them, the history of adaptation and survival expressed in their sinuous trunks. The role that flaws played in their survival. The community of life within the forest, from fungi in the soil to the moss and lichens on the trunks to birds living in the canopy high overhead. The importance of death as trees fall and feed the soil, making new life possible, providing homes for wildlife.
It takes time and experience and the willingness to observe carefully to develop this intuitive feel for old growth. The first step though is simply to go to an old growth forest. To breathe and listen and look around. To touch ancient bark. There aren’t so many places around where you can go and do this, especially somewhere you can get to in shorts and sandals (if you’re a teenager.)
Sometimes the youth were engaged, measuring trunks, offering sage to the grandmother Nipnoqan (the one we first met in November who came in at 107.5 cm dbh by the way); learning more Mi’kmaw names. As a group we moved easily through the forest off trail, across a swamp to reach the hardwood hill and then back again further south to meet the rare and endangered Wiskoq, the Black Ash citizen scientist identified. The details of how to distinguish White Ash from Black Ash may not have been compelling by this point in the hike, but the walk back out on the old trail was a dream of freshest green, that luminous green of beech leaves newly unfurled.
June, said shalan, the Mi’kmaw word for June is nipniku’s. Leaf-moon. Nipi is leaf; -ku’s is moon or month. Leaf moon.
We ate lunch beside Goldsmith Lake then shalan handed out Mi’kmaw tree identification sheets and challenged the students to identify some of the trees surrounding us. It was remarkable how the offer of stickers got the students moving.
What did they take away with them from their visit? A glimpse perhaps of what the forests once were in Mi’kma’ki and can be again? The experience of standing by a grandmother Nipnoqan far older than you will ever be. A moment of knowing in their bodies what it is to be in a whole forest of grandmothers.


Lichen Camp Day 95
Nina Newington, June 4, 2024
People often comment on the calm they feel at camp. Hermit Thrushes sing at dawn and dusk. Orchids and Bunchberry and Blue Bead Lily line the path to the outhouse. (Well, okay, the out tarp, but the commode is snazzy and handmade — thank you Cabot.) We are doing what we can to protect and restore our world. Msit no’kmaq.
But sometimes our relations have a sharp word or two to say. The other day, on the way back from a foray to check out the Wisqoq, the endangered Black Ash one of Licheneers found a while back, I found myself in a new to me patch of old growth forest (yes, more of it.) All was peace and wonder and big trees until shrieks filled the air. A large bird rocketed through the canopy. Another joined the cacophony though not at quite such length. Northern Goshawks. A pair, nesting up in the treetops somewhere and most definitely wanting me to move right along. They did not give up until I was well away, the male swooping lower, feinting in my direction only to bank away. It was thrilling and overwhelming and slightly frightening and not at all calm. Later, in the tent, supper cooked, I imagined them in their nest, settling their feathers, pleased with their teamwork.


Lichen Camp Day 90
Nina Newington, June 9, 2024

May 30, 2024

“There can be no purpose more inspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.” E.O. Wilson.

Since setting up Lichen Camp on March 2nd, 24 different people have camped and 5 others have filled in daytime gaps. Some of us are retired, others come at the weekend or after work, leaving the next morning. Still others have done the steady behind the scenes work required to keep the schedule sorted and necessary information flowing. Then there have been donations from baked goods to firewood to fire cider, not to mention cash and artwork.

Oh and there was the heroic duo who drove into camp one dark and stormy night to help lash down tents when, in the woods, the ground was rising and falling like the sea. The wind, too fierce to stand up in out on the logging road, was rocking the spruce trees at the forest edge, their shallow, moss-covered root fans lifting and dropping back down. None of the tents were damaged that night, thanks to amazing people willing to step up when needed. You know who you are.

And then there are the lichen hunters identifying species at risk and finding ever more old growth forest, building the case for protecting this whole area and nibbling ever more holes (in the form of 100m buffers) in the cut blocks DNRR mistakenly approved for logging in 2022.

Our goals of forest protection, research and education are all being met. On June 5th a group of Mi’kmaw youth from Bear River First Nation are coming to experience some of the old growth forest here and to meet the endangered Wisqoq or Black Ash found growing west of Goldsmith Lake.

All over the world there are groups of people beginning ‘the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.’ At one level it is a slog — what will it take for DNRR to agree that it is not appropriate to harvest in a biodiversity hotspot like the one we have documented around Goldsmith Lake? But at another level it is a joy and a privilege to play our small part in protecting and restoring our home. Msit no’kmaq. All my relations.


Lichen Camp Day 88
Lisa Proulx on May 29, 2024

I finally made time to get into Goldsmith Lake and Lichen Camp on Sunday. It had been awhile due to family matters and I was ready for a fix.

I spotted a bear twice near the same spot…very exciting as I’d only seen scat and tracks prior to this. (I was safely driving in the car both times!)

Nina had recommended a new spot to explore that she considered as looking “juicy” and she was right! We loosely followed Tupper Brook south and wandered around looking for big trees…we eventually found a nice Sugar Maple with a DBH (diameter at breast height) of 79 cm. The spring flowers were in bloom everywhere! Lady’s-Slippers, Bunchberry, Painted Trillium, Rhodora, in two lovely shades, Starflowers, Bluebead Lily, Bluets and Rose Twisted Stalk to name a few! We saw lots of frogs…always a good sign. Of course the highlight of the day was a Sclerophora stubble lichen growing on the exposed heartwood of a Yellow Birch. I’ve sent it off to a lichenologist for ID, hoping it will be the protected Frosted Glass Whiskers!

The old forest around Goldsmith Lake worked its magic on my tired body and frazzled mind…I came away feeling soothed and hopeful. Spending time getting to know its inhabitants with another citizen scientist is balm for my soul. The many laughs also helped!

I’m so grateful that I can spend time doing what I love best…roaming the woods…and helping to protect it…thank you Goldsmith Lake forests! ❤


Lichen Camp Day 87
Nina Newington on May 27, 2024
It’s not all research, education and blackfly support at Lichen Camp.
It was getting pretty hot in the main tent in the afternoons when, late last week, two noble, nameless Samaritans showed up with a screen tent and a zero gravity chair. Oh boy! Love it.
In case you think we’re slacking off, we did also come upon yet more old growth forest last week, this time west of camp in the headwaters of Tupper Brook. It’s next to one of the areas DNRR approved for logging in 2022. Fortunately most of the harvest plan area that is within the boundaries of the proposed Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area has not been cut. The part that was is a mess but that’s another story.
We’ll have a lot more to say about this new area of old growth later this week when we’ve had a chance to explore more. Suffice to say we already found one probable Frosted Glass Whisker. Awaiting confirmation…



Lichen Camp Day 82

Nina Newington on May 22, 2024
We light the tent at night with LuminAid solar lanterns, recharge them in the day. They were invented by two young women for use in disaster zones. The light they give is warm, gentle.
Went to sleep with the waxing moon shining through the canvas.
Woke to Hermit Thrushes singing all around camp in the still standing forest.
The Black-throated Green Warbler has joined the dawn chorus line.
Life is good, the black flies thick this windless morning.


For older posts, go to www.versicolor.ca/nstraid

Also view there:

Ashlea Hegedus-Viola on Stubble Lichens

On Calcicoid Lichens