tears mixed with rain on the afternoon of February 1st, 1997 off the coast of British Columbia.

A large crowd was gathered for a memorial service led by members of the Haida Nation, the indigenous

peoples of the Haida Gwai Islands, and the community was in deep mourning.

Some attendees had to park a mile away

as people from all across the islands

had traveled in for the ceremony,

one in which Haida leaders played drums

and sang songs in somber remembrance.

A foundational member of their community

had been unexpectedly killed,

and everyone was feeling their loss.

As sobs, drumbeats, and songs of mourning filled the cold island air, gases drifted across the

river, where the body of the elder that they had lost laid untouched on the riverbank.

The elder's arm stretched out onto the banks,

reaching up towards the gray sky.

You wouldn't have known it at first glance,

but the crowd that gathered that day was not there to mourn a human.

They were grieving the loss of a tree.

A massive Sitka spruce, more than 300 years old, lay dead on the ground.

The tree was known as Kidkias, or Old Tree to the Haida people.

Ten days earlier, just before daybreak, a man swam across the freezing river and made a series

of calculated chainsaw cuts that put an end to the generations old Sitka Spurs' life.

...