Olympic

We took the ferry from Seattle to Brainbridge Island and from there we zig-zagged north through a patchwork of Indian Reservations and small towns to the Olympic peninsula. Most of the peninsula, the farthest point North on the West coast, has been dedicated as a National or State Park. There are no roads that traverse the park. You cannot go into the heart of Olympic except on foot. With no roads, no cars, no houses, most of the peninsula has remained a wilderness. For its antiquity and purity the U.N named this vast acreage as a World Heritage Site, a place that will be protected forever as a marker of our common heritage, our common home.

The sheer diversity within the park is astounding. The first day we hiked up alpine slopes to the top of a small mountain. From there we could see the Sound to the East and the fading layers of green pine to the West. We watched soft waves of fog roll down the steep banks of trees and linger in the branches. The Native people who’ve lived here for thousands of years have a name for this incredible relationship between the sky and the earth. They say that the trees are calling and giving to the rain.

The next day we hiked through the rain forest to a small waterfall. The slight drizzle glowed like fog in the sun and as we walked through the tall forest we had a bone-deep feeling that we were experiencing something ancient, something powerful and unchangeable. Moss climbed up every trunk and dripped like water from the branches of the trees. Soft green lichen grew like delicate fur up the towering pines. Lines of trees grew out of the massive trunks of their fallen companions so that even after hundreds of years you could still see the ghostly outlines of trunks within the bowed cascade of roots. Everything, everywhere seemed to be breathing.

We drove through the small town of Forks, which has now become famous as the birthplace of Twilight, the ultimate teen romance book series and every tweens reason for living. We stopped for french fries and our waitress, who we first spied playing with the gumball machine in the lobby and who we had mistaken for a mentally disturbed loiterer, explained to us that thousands of Twilight fans pilgrimage there every year. She was wearing a long golden cape, belted at the waist. We asked her why she was wearing the cape and she fixed us with a stare that would melt metal, “uh, it’s homecoming week. Duh.”

Our last day we took a three mile trail to the ocean. We raced along the swollen wooden planks of the boardwalk trail. After about an hour we pushed through the last fan of foliage and onto the coast of the Pacific ocean. The trunks of ancient trees formed a wall of soaking wood. Swollen with surf and salt the giants seemed to slumber on the gray stones. Out in the rough froth of the sea we could see the chests of tall islands of rock, sprouting far off trees, few and proud. A pair of bald eagles sailed out to them. Sebastian picked up a long piece of kelp and carried it around like a circus staff. I bent down to the beach and found stones flecked with turquoise and orchid red. The tide drew nearer to the fallen trees and they began to edge back into the ocean. The eagles flew up from the ocean and settled in their high nests. The trees called to the rain and it began to fall on the beach. We’d made it to the west coast and somehow, it just seemed like we were returning also.