Because I feel like I didn't quite do them justice in my last post and because in this forest I felt a deep connection to another world, place, or time - we could almost feel the energy of these giants flow into the mossy ground around us and into our bodies as we ran our hands along their rough trunks.
Yesterday, we hiked in the North-Western part of olympic national park on Hurricane Ridge. This up and down hike took us along Sunset Ridge and past it - giving us views of Mt. Olympus amongst a spectacular mountain range, many of which are 6000+ feet high! as well as the Puget Sound and several glacial lakes. At the top, exhausted and thirsty, we ran into - literally - a pack of mountain goats!
After a lovely night spent camping in the evergreens, we headed to explore the rain forest of the olympic peninsula and found ourselves on the mossy trail in hoh valley - whose moss-draped trees and brooks filled with floating plants made the world feel Seussian. I kept expecting the lorax to jump out and tell us to stay on the trail. We took a quick trip out to the ocean (in La Push, made famous by a recent novel about vampires) and were mesmerized by the huge rocky islands just off-shore surrounded by fog. the seemed to form a protective barrier around this northwestern most tip of the continental US, daring anyone to try to get through.
finally, we headed back to Seattle via the ferry to stay with a friend who is in his first year of residency in family medicine - chat about life, do some laundry, and eat some veggies.
next up: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Mister!", he said with a sawdusty sneeze,
"I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues,
And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs" --
He was very upset as he shouted and puffed --
"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?"
-Dr. Seuss (from The Lorax)
No comments:
Post a Comment