Journey to the Sea: Part 2

 I woke up in the rainforest, on the high bank of the Bogachiel River. Granola in cold milk with a cup of steaming hot earl grey tea to start the day. I packed up camp, hiked out, and drove west towards the Elwha River. The last time I had been there was in the summer of 2014, on a break from my fieldwork in Alaska, and just after the Glines Canyon Dam had been breached. At the time, this was the largest dam removal project in the world, allowing the river to flow freely all the way from its headwaters in the Olympics to the sea, for the first time in over a hundred years. Kyle, my boyfriend at the time, and I snuck through a chain link fence in order to get a glimpse of the results of this monumental event. 

The breach in Glines Canyon Dam. Photo credit to Kyle Anderson.

The Elwha River draining through a century of sediment accumulated behind the dam.

Ten years later, when I returned to the river I learned that it had taken out a big section of road, so you could only drive to within a few miles of the old dam site. From there, you could hike or bike up a bypass trail and the remaining road into the watershed. Lucky me, I had brought a mountain bike with me!

Bike-passing the wild and free Elwha River.

Biking up an abandoned road felt like a surreal trip through the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Maybe it was just spring, but an old visitor center with a collection of buildings for housing park service employees and maintenance equipment looked abandoned with the flagpole unadorned and winter debris untouched in the parking areas.

A dream of a world where cars have been abandoned.

I climbed up the steep road to the top of the dam, and left my bike leaning against a pit toilet that was locked and boarded up. Red-flowering current bloomed on the edge of the old overlook. I walked up to the platform and gazed out at the reservoir valley, where the river braided its way through the old sediments, and young willows were taking over new banks. Swallows danced around me, swinging down into the cool, shaded river canyon then up into bright sunny sky.

The beauty of a reborn river.

Journey to the Sea: Part 1

 After being delayed a day by a surprise 10 inches of snow, I headed west to visit friends in Portland and Port Townsend. I dropped Jasper off with Mike and Lora and got lunch with Garik in Troutdale on the way west.

In Portland I visited Mandy and her new dog Azora, a strange low and wolfy beast, with the pale eyes and straight ears of a husky. She's still near Ladd's Addition, in the same apartment for a few years now. I had a delicious Turkish egg breakfast, which was a couple poached eggs nestled in a bowl lined with greek yogurt and seasoned with dill, at the cafe outside her place. She's walking dogs for a contracting agency, and still pursuing her interests in primitive skills. She is feeling less stressed with the hope that her student loans will be forgiven in 10 years or so.

I spent a full day on Sauvie Island, biking around, watching the fishing boats drift down the river in the morning, and hiking to Warrior Point at the northernmost tip of the island. I also visited Cistus Nursery, which specializes in Mediterranean-climate plants of an immense variety. Walking through their greenhouses was incredibly overwhelming, but I got 2x each of Quercus kellogii and Quercus lobata, echinoides tanoak, Western redbuds (for my Dad), and Baker's cypress.

Before leaving the city, I went on Mission: Pants to a Goodwill, finding 4 or 5 out of 6 pairs of pants despite there being no changing room due to a combination of Covid and shoplifting. I tried them on in a cold wet park restroom instead.

The next day I traveled north along the 101 through an at-times heavy rain. Crossing the bridge from Astoria over the Columbia was literally breathtaking. I stopped for a bowl of clam chowder in Raymond, where I ended up talking about tethered logging and Instagram with a logger from Kamloops who was also on a road trip. I thought of Nicole going by Willapa Bay. That evening I got McDonald's and a room at the Shiny Motel outside Aberdeen, where the new owners told me they had moved there from Iowa six months before. I showered and tuned into a landowner meeting for work that evening.

I continued north along the Western side of the Olympic Peninsula. I had breakfast at an emmpty diner in Quinault, where the owner/server told me that she was waiting for her ex-husband to die so she could share their shared house and move back to Olympia. It's just to rural for her taste in Quinault. I headed into the National Park to wander around a couple small loop hikes, wondering at the mossy, ferny greenness of it all and at the giant trees. A herd of Roosevelt elk were the only beings around, and we gazed at each other curiously.

The 101 curved west to the coast and I stopped driving again to run on the beach. There, Velella velella shone iridescent blue on the sand, the springs spewed out of the eroding cliffside then fanned out along the beach, the driftwood piled up at the base of the cliff, and the big ocean waves crashed on the shore. A German couple took selfies jumping off a log, on the count of Eins! Zwei! Drei!

North again, to the Bogachiel. The Mazda made it up the steep and potholed road to the Forest Service trailhead, where I arrived at the same time another couple was setting out for a hike. I enjoyed a quiet and magical hike along the wetland loop and river trails, dipping in passed the National Park boundary, where I sat in a pocket of sun and had a snack, marveling at the lush beauty of it all. On the walk back, I noticed a couple camp-able spots on the edge of the terrace above the alder-filled floodplain of the dynamic river. 

I headed into Forks and got some enchiladas, refried beans, and rice at the local Mexican restaurant, which was having a family event in the back. The little children laughed and played on the swingset outside in the grass. I grabbed some granola and milk at the grocery store, and head back to the Bogachiel to camp in an old homestead site, where nothing remained that I could see except the rhizomatous grasses. I dropped down to the floodplain, weaving my way through the riparian maze. Numerous elk tracks were set deep in the wet sand of the slough. I found my way to the river and leaned on a driftwood log, digging my toes into the river sand, soaking up the last fading gold light of the evening. Lewis and Clark started up the Missouri in my bedtime reading.