Salmon, Cedar, Rocks, and Rain -- Right in Our Backyard

 I haven’t blogged in a while, blocked by appalling genocidal wars, campus demonstrations, civil and criminal trials, hometown-company mis-steps, and frightful polls, so a trip to the outdoors was tonic to clear the brain. Our friends Pam and Jim put us onto the Olympic Peninsula, just the tonic I needed.

 

Right in our backyard: Salmon, Cedar, Rocks and Rain*

Some of you, I am sure, are very familiar with the Olympic Peninsula. I did not discover the richness of the Olympic Peninsula and the Olympic National Park until recently – long after having put my backpacking and mountain hiking days behind me.

Hurricane Ridge, 1986

When I came here in 1985, at age 50, my then-wife had little interest in exploring the outdoors unless it featured fairways, sand traps, and greens and had a 19^th hole available. No way would she be sleeping on the ground, thank you very much. While she golfed at our place in Palm Desert, I had half the year, i.e., winter and early spring, based here in Seattle, but my job entailed constant travel. What little local exploration I did was pretty limited. I made one photo outing to Hurricane Ridge in spring of 1986 but that was it for the Olympics.

After our divorce in ’87, I resigned from the Seattle Golf Club (no one resigns from the Seattle Golf Club!), gave away the sticks and began to explore. But it was eastward I looked, toward ski areas, Alpine lakes, Mt. Rainier, and the Cascades. I climbed Rainier in ’88 (@14,411, highest in the lower 48.)

 After meeting Ann and marrying in ’91 it was skiing in the Methow and Sun Valley, mountain hiking on Rainier and in the Cascades, exploring Mt. Saint Helens; we climbed Adams together; sailed in the San Juans and Gulf Islands. I fly fished the Deschutes and in BC – but all this time, ignored the Olympics.

A month or so ago, with friends Jim and Pam, we planned an Olympics trip. I began to bone up on what this Olympic Peninsula has to offer. And OMG, what I have missed all these years!  

The Olympic National Park which centers the peninsula is, in the lower 48, the largest wilderness uncrossed by roads; you can drive 20 or so miles into it from various spots on its perimeter, but to go through it – only backpackers can navigate through the Dan Evans Wilderness which is the center of the park, a three-night, four day trek. Jumbled mountains, meandering rivers, fluky weather. Tuesday, Ann and I drove 18 miles from sea level in sunny Port Angeles to 5,200’ – one mile up in 18 miles --

Hurricane Ridge 2024

and into a full snowstorm that blocked all views of Hurricane Ridge.

We visited the Ho Rain Forest – nice but unnecessary for there are rain forests nearly everywhere on the peninsula’s Southwest side. But the Ho is the departure point for hiking to and climbing Mt. Olympus. Rain forests are spooky and silent -- not so silent if you stand still and listen hard, Moss-draped, gigantic, thousand-year-old spruces, pines, firs, cedars – myriad ferns and mosses: botany on adrenaline.

Can you picture the peninsula? It’s arrowhead-shaped, with its point, Cape Flattery, to the northwest, as far from Key West as you can get short of Alaska or Hawaii. It’s bounded on the north by the Straits of Juan de Fuca; on the east by Hood Canal; on the south by Grays Harbor, Hoquiam, Aberdeen and connections to Olympia; and on the west by the raging Pacific, which is anything but pacific along that 140-mile rocky, hay-stacked shore. (And it houses some delightfully, outrageously named towns: try Humptulips for one, or Dosewallops.)   

It was on that hay-stacked shore that we joined Jim and Pam at La Push, HQ of the Quileute Reservation. The town speaks of tribes without casinos or oil: trailers, RV's or ramshackle clapboard houses, yards full of junked cars and rusting appliances. The town lives on commercial fishing, logging, and tourism.

The Quileute Oceanside Resort is owned and operated by the tribe, so I mistakenly expected little. In fact, we shared a beautifully appointed two-bedroom house right on the drift-wood studded, surf-pounded beach with haystacks just off-shore. The house is quality construction and tastefully, fully appointed. 

The view from our living room @ Quileute Oceanside Resort

And those beaches -- #’s 1,2,3, and Rialto (I think the Quileutes need some branding help, don’t you?) -- those beaches go on forever. Did it rain? Of course: cold, wet, and windy – that comes with the territory. 

Quileute #2

But, if fresh water and lake lodges are your thing, stay as we did one night in Quinault Lodge on Lake Quinault, in the Quinault Indian Nation (no visa needed.) The room was a bit weird, but the restaurant is excellent and the staff couldn’t have been more pleasant and proficient. The menu creative and wine list ample. 

Lake Crescent is the lake not to miss. Stunningly beautiful, as pretty as any we hiked around in Switzerland during my tours of teaching hospitality management at University Center, Cesar Ritz. Lake Crescent Lodge we’ll try next time.

The Quileute and Quinault are two of six indigenous language families on the peninsula – Makah, Klallam, Chemakum, Twana, Chehalis, Quinault, and Quileute. There are nine major tribes within those language groups, all with their distinctive  traditions, their prides and woes, but all share a will to survive and thrive. In each of the nine major tribes there are sub-clans that claim their own distinct identities.

Some thrive more than others – the Quileute are dependent on fishing, lumbering and tourism; others have their casinos, some industry, but always tourism – theirs is the Olympic peninsula. Save for a few Anglo settlements such as around Gray’s Harbor and up at Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend, the tribes and indigenous folk are the People of the Peninsula. This is their land; they have fought for it, care about it and fight for the right to be care-givers to it and its wildlife.

And if wildlife is your thing, have deer, Roosevelt elk, sea otters, river otters, black bear, (grizzlies may be coming,) grey whales, humpbacks, orcas, marmots, mountain goats (being removed and wolves being re-introduced), seals, lynx, cougar, bobcat, five species of oysters, eleven of clams, plus mussels, urchins, and over 300 species of birds. While Ann and I ate lunch along the shore at Port Angeles, we watched a river otter gathering her lunch off the rocks right below us.

And, of course, the salmon – five species of that miraculous, spiritual symbol of life sacrificed for generations to come. Frank N and I camped out by the Elwha twelve years ago, when the first dam was removed. Now the salmon have returned; harvestable, sustainable runs are nearly back.

Salmon, Cedar, Rock and Rain*. Go and explore this treasure of ours. All four sides of it – and if you’re still young enough, backpack that interior. The best wilderness area of the Lower 48 awaits you – right in my backyard.

Fort Worden (or is that a Hopper?)

*Plagiarism alert: I “borrowed” my title from Salmon, Cedar, Rock and Rain, a beautiful collection of essays about and photos of the peninsula edited by Tim McNulty and published by Braided River, an imprint of Mountaineer Books, 2024