Toronto Star: The best place to go forest bathing? The ancient groves of Vancouver Island offer a meditative journey back in time

Some of the most enormous trees on the planet — Sitka spruces, Douglas firs, Western red cedars — flourish in the lush temperate rainforests of B.C., nurtured by the downpours and year-round growing season.

Some of them rival skyscraper heights. The most ancient are 1,000 years old or so. The trees in and around this town thrive in thickets like Avatar Grove (temporarily closed) and Eden Grove, their evocative descriptions nodding to cinematic beauty, an unspoiled paradise.

Some of the trees are famous enough to warrant their own names, like Big Lonely Doug, Canada’s second-largest Douglas fir, measuring 216 feet tall. Spared by a logger, he stands as a solitary survivor in a stump-filled clear-cut near Port Renfrew. Now a poignant symbol of what we lose when old-growth forests are destroyed, Big Lonely Doug has become an ecotourist attraction, too.

Historically, Port Renfrew was a logging town. Its reinvention as a travel destination — with a sort of undiscovered-Tofino-ish vibe — is relatively new. It remains a small stop on the Pacific Marine Circle Route, with still-spotty Wi-Fi and just a smattering of restaurants and hotels, including the plush seaside cottages at Wild Renfrew. There’s not much to do, besides breathe the salty air and take in the scenery, but that’s enough.

Visitors come to try their hand at sport fishing, roam nearby Botanical Beach, hike the challenging backcountry (there’s access to the West Coast Trail and Juan de Fuca Marine Trail) and, of course, commune with the colossal trees.

Credit for the rise of tall-tree tourism here goes to the Ancient Forest Alliance, a charitable organization that advocates for protecting B.C.’s endangered old-growth forests. According to the organization, the province’s southern coast was home to 3.3 million hectares of productive old-growth forests, in the time before settlers arrived. Today, only 860,000 hectares are left, and the majority of this remains unprotected from potential logging.

If big trees become a major tourist draw, the thinking goes, there would be more motivation (and political pressure) to save B.C.’s few remaining old-growth forests.

In 2009, while scouting around Port Renfrew, Ancient Forest Alliance co-founder and conservation photographer TJ Watt discovered a magnificent 50-hectare stand of enormous Douglas firs and red cedars. The relatively easy-to-reach wilderness area — it’s right off a road — would become Avatar Grove, home to “Canada’s gnarliest tree,” a strangely shaped red cedar distinguished by a 12-foot-wide burl.

There’s the Red Creek Fir, the largest-known Douglas fir on Earth, in the San Juan Valley. Near it is the San Juan Spruce, one of the country’s biggest Sitka spruce trees. About a three-hour road trip from Port Renfrew, there’s also Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park, one of the most accessible stands of old-growth Douglas firs on Vancouver Island.

What the facts and figures and record-book brags can’t quite convey is the profound awe of being here, walking among giants that have survived a millennium and will outlast us, if we care to protect them. There’s a sense of the sublime you won’t know — until you come and feel for yourself.