We have just ducked under a fallen giant, the corpse of a massive Douglas-fir recently toppled and resting on a steep hillside. Far downhill, branches of a former canopy touch the river that we have been following. Looking uphill I can see the flared root crown, where trunk once met ground. From this crown, gnarled roots reach back for the hold they were unable to sustain, grasping at straws. This is not an unusual sight and coming up the Duckabush River on the eastern edge of Olympic National Park, we have seen a lot of big trees on the ground. Along this short stretch of trail there are five or six huge trees down, probably all victims of the same wind storm. Among these trees, miles upriver from the trailhead, even further from the shoreline, past the blowdown, we find a campsite. Exploring beyond the campsite, we come to a rock-filled area at the bottom of another steep slope, a place too unsettled for big trees. In this pocket of open land, the rocks are overrun with a plant that I didn’t really expect to see here in the middle of the thick forest, broadleaf stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium). This is a stonecrop stronghold, a sedum kingdom, a jumbled boulder field with an open window to the blue sky above.