While the photo may look like an ordinary hole in the ground, it's unique to coastal BC. The black soil is organic not mineral. The grey clay was deposited under an ocean during the last ice age. The stark color contrasts reflect too the clay's sterility with the temperate rain forest's fertility. The black vs. grey illustrates, too, how tenuous our hold upon this transition between sea and land that is coastal BC.

Not convinced the black stuff isn't ordinary dirt? Just like back east? Try rubbing it between your fingers. There isn't any grittiness. If its wet (and it usually is as organics act like sponges) it will rub down to greasiness not grit.

"We worked for years to convince other soil scientist that the stuff was really soil," says Rick Trowbridge, a Ministry of Forests researcher based in Smithers. "The science grew out of agriculture schools; so when they started looking at forest soils they'd just kick aside the organic layer of leaf litter or humus to get at the real i.e. mineral soil. That may be acceptable in some eastern hardwood forest but on the coast the organic layer may be three foot thick."

"At first they wanted to lump it in with peat bogs' organics so we had to persuade them they were totally different". In Trowbridge's 1987 article which officially christens these soils as Folisols there is a convincing photograph that shows the black muck over a peat from the Rainbow Lake area of Price Rupert. Presumably the rain forest overgrew a bog. It took 2000 years to accumulate the eighteen inches of hemic folisol (muck). The bottom of the peat layer dated back 10,000 years.

Personally I am not convinced that Trowbridge is correct. Isn't comparing rain forest soil to leaf litter like comparing apples and oranges? Folisols are like a cancerous leaf litter produced by "too wet and too cool" climate that can't properly decompose all that lushness into mineral soil. Why not just as boreal conifer forests produce podzol soils and prairie grass lands produce chernozem soils so temperate rain forests produce muck? Or is it really 'Raven Pooh'? Did the muck cause the rain forest, not vice versa?

Here is the story as I heard it: While flying over the Skeena estuary one day Raven saw his friend Rainbow looking a little sad. As Rainbow tended to see the bright side in any situation Raven was moved to ask: "What's up?" "It's that I am always getting my feet wet; there are only mountains and ocean here; no flat lands upon which to build our villages". "But there is lots of flat land towards the interior". Refrain: "Yes, but I like it here, where it is not too hot and dry in summer, nor too cold and snowy in winter."

Now Raven had a huge appetite some say even gluttonous so he decided to drink the ocean to lower the sea level to where diving-bird had told him there was flat land below. He carried the water to the interior so now we have the Lakes Country. He even gave Sockeye's eggs a lift so now each lake has its own run of sockeye.

When he got back to what is now called Prince Rupert he saw Rainbow looking a little glum. There was flat land now but once the sun shone it became rock hard. "We can always make pottery houses out of this clay" said Rainbow. Raven sent Rainbow out to explore the fishing off the new islands made by the lowered sea level; then Raven set to work: eating. Raven had a huge appetite some say even gluttonous. Finally satiated Raven flew back to the sea-land and shall we modestly say: "defecated".

Once the black stuff hardened in the sun and the warm rains came it burst forth in luxuriant growth of salmonberries, thimble-berries, salal and skunk currants, Raven's favorite foods. So to this day if you do not mow your lawn or if you cut down the trees the Raven pooh sends up lush growth of Raven delicacies.

Another day I'll tell how Raven humbled hemlock and cajoled sitka spruce and red cedar to come to the sea-land where: "it's never too hot and dry in summer, nor too cold and snowy in winter."