A four foot diameter, 150 foot tall Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziessi), near Lost Lake he size of our property obviously limits your ability to go for a hike whose length exceeds a few hundred metres. If the beach and its patternwork of intertidal life is your bag, then you can walk for miles and miles in either direction. If a walk in town was more along the idea of what you wanted to do, a short drive to Westview will put you in place for a more urban adventure. And if the woods is where you really want to go, we'll show you temperate rain-forests superceded only by those of the pristine coast of west Vancouver Island and protected Provincial Parks. Our trails run the gamut from wheelchair-accessible terrain of little gradation to challenging trails of the extreme variety. Two groups, the ‘BOMB Squad’ and ‘PRPAWS’ (Powell River Parks and Wilderness Society), in conjunction with the hard work of many individuals, have opened up the wilderness with fine trails and bridges whilst leaving the natural state of the land virtually intact. So if you've got a hankering for some serious hiking, look no further than Powell River, and Oceanside. The Trees The year is 200 AD, and the world's foremost power, the Roman Empire, is in the midst of a military crisis. Barbarian tribes threaten the vast empire on all sides save the Mediterranean and the weighty burden of financing an enormous army is bringing the ecomony to the verge of collapse. Constantine is still a century

away and the Middle Ages a further hundred years beyond him. Half way around the world, on the ancient Sechelt Peninsula, 50 kilometres southeast of Oceanside, a seed of the Yellow Cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) germinates. This great evergreen was cut down in the 20th century, but not before living for nearly 1700 years. The Pacific Northwest is home to the largest trees in Canada, and though the forests around Powell River do not contain the record living trees for any of the evergreen species, we do have a number of old growth groves whose aged trees can still cause your mind to wander back into the annals of their lives. Large tracts of old growth cedars, firs, spruce and hemlock can still be accessed along the soon-to-be-famous Sunshine Coast Trail (The gargantuan Western Red Cedar's (Thuja plicata) buttressed trunk is much broader than that of its conifer