A Land Stewards Field Guide
The Mystic Forest Field Guide
Every living thing you can meet in the redwoods, rivers, and tidepools of Klamath. Built to power the quests, and to become a downloadable offline app you carry into the forest.
📲 Open the live app (installable, works offline)
Search, sounds, photos, and pin-a-sighting. Add it to your home screen.
What is inside
126 species and subjects, across 10 worlds
🌲 Trees
13 entries
13 entries
🌿 Plants & Ferns
22 entries
22 entries
🍄 Fungi & Lichens
12 entries
12 entries
🐻 Mammals
17 entries
17 entries
🦉 Birds
16 entries
16 entries
🦎 Amphibians & Reptiles
9 entries
9 entries
🐌 Insects & Inverts
10 entries
10 entries
🌊 Ocean & Tidepools
16 entries
16 entries
🐟 River Fish
5 entries
5 entries
✨ Mythos & Named Trees
6 entries
6 entries
A taste of what lives here
Marquee finds
Photo: Tomwsulcer, CC0
🌲 Trees
Coast RedwoodTallest tree on Earth; on foggy mornings it drinks the fog, combing up to 40% of its water from the air.
Photo: DaBler, CC BY-SA 3.0
🐻 Mammals
American Black BearIts nose has about 100 times the scent receptors of ours. A fed bear is a dead bear, store food sealed.
Photo: Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0
🦉 Birds
Marbled MurreletRare and threatened. It builds no nest, laying one egg on a mossy redwood branch and flying 50+ miles to the sea to feed.
Photo: Minette Layne, CC BY 2.0
🌊 Ocean & Tidepools
Ochre Sea StarThe original keystone species. It digests a mussel by pushing its stomach out through its own mouth.
Photo: Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 2.5
🐌 Insects & Inverts
Pacific Banana SlugA California icon. Its slime is a numbing anesthetic that makes predators spit it out.
Photo: Ryan Hagerty / USFWS, public domain
🐟 River Fish
Chinook SalmonHeart of the river and the Yurok world. Its spawning carcass carries ocean nutrients into the redwoods themselves.
The full 126 entries, with rarity markers, look-alike differentials, sounds, photos, and a pin-a-sighting tool, live in the downloadable offline app.
Scavenger hunts
Three ways to play, one trail
Child, Forest Friends: find and feel. Spot the banana slug, hug a redwood, smell a bay leaf. Earns the Scavenger token.
Adult, Reading the Forest: identify by feature, match a species to its job. Earns the Steward token.
Expert, Indicator Species: phenology, rarity, threatened-species literacy, real observations logged. Earns the Elder token.
Every hunt runs on Deepen, Orient, Transform: notice with your senses, find your place in the system, then do one small act of stewardship.
The Steward Code: Keep it tight, stay on trails (redwood roots are shallow). Save a bear life, never feed wildlife, store food sealed. Look, do not taste, never eat anything wild without a trusted expert; leaves of three, let it be. Touch tidepools only with a wet fingertip, never pry animals off rock. This is Yurok and Tolowa homeland, tread, fish, and gather with respect.
ruthdiaz.world 