Evergreen

We traveled north, through Wyoming and into the snow storms of big sky of Montana. We drove up into the dry mountains of Western Montana and then swooped down into the massive pine forests of northern Idaho. And so we reached the border of the old forests. Once upon a time ancient forests of trees brushed across large swaths of the U.S like shadow. In these areas of the country forest grew on top of forest. Fire swept the bodies of old trees to the ground, leaving only a few charred relics to stand among the new trees that pushed out of the old like sap.

We reached Mount Rainier National Park in the dark. Once in Washington, we stopped at a tiny drive through burger joint called “Pop’s” and ordered dinner. Back on the road we watched the sun go down directly ahead of us, ever widening and red. We exited the highway just a few miles down and began to twist south into the mountains. On either side of the road giant trees rose up, their crowns of needles so far beyond our headlights they seemed to just disappear into the black sky.

No one was at the campground. Just a few silent RVs. We set up our tent on a thick bed of old pine needles and fell to sleep, warm for the first time in weeks. In the morning we struggled out into the perpetual twilight of the dense forest and drove around the park. The mountains grew up in sharp jags of pine. Every once in a while a break in the wall of green would reveal a smaller stand of broadleaf trees, visible only by their rusty splash of orange and red. That day we hiked up until we could see the thick bands of glacial ice that ran down the side of Mount Rainier and then we turned around.

For the first time, we did not make a fire. We read by the light of Seb’s old kerosene lamp. We put two beers in the neck of the icy creek to cool for dinner and the ravens swooped low out of the trees. We cooked rice over a small camping stove and watched the steam rise up through the canopy, realizing that we sat within some of the last ancient forests of America that still stand and remember what this country had been for so many millennia.