Disney Animals and Cloud Windows: Olympic National Park
Soooo, google maps says it takes 2 hours 18 minutes to drive from Seattle to Olympic National Park. Primary sources ::coughcoughmecoughcough:: clock it at 4 hours and 32 minutes. This route also included a ferry ride, which I had not anticipated since I had never seen the google maps icon for a ferry and, as a result, I arrived just in time to see the real life ferry pulling away from the dock. I’d been at the dock for fifteen minutes at that point but I couldn’t find the toll both, which had disguised itself like the entry way to a gated old folks home.
2 hours and 15 minutes after getting off the ferry, I pull into the visitor center and inquire about hiking trails. The ranger on duty points me in the direction of a steep five mile trail and I set out for the trailhead. Two ducks come waddling up to me as I’m lacing up my boots. They look at me, quack, look at each other, quack, and look back at me. They waddle around a little bit but never more than a few feet from me. I know what you’re thinking- they want food, they take me for a sucker, blah blah blah, but I *reallllly* feel like these ducks just want to chat.
Many photos later, I tear myself away from the ducks and hit the trail.
It’s a rainy, foggy morning (my favorite hiking weather) and all I can see through the trees are dense, misty, white clouds. The clouds softens the already quiet sounds of the forest to an intimate delicacy. The lookout points show only an abyss of bright, white light and it’s possible to lose your sense of direction entirely. A baby squirrel is watching me from a branch beside the trail, chattering away. “What’s up?” I say. It chatters back. “Oh?” I say. It chatters back. “You don’t say.” It chatters back. I’m beginning to think that the animals in this park are really humans put under a curse by an evil sorceress. Does Disney know about this place? Did Disney make this place?
Just as I reach the first peak the sun breaks through and opens up a hole in the clouds just big enough to see a mountain top across the valley. I had no idea the other mountains were so close. On a sunny day the view changes as you hike but today the cloud window does the work for me and shows me different pictures as I watch it move across the landscape. I catch a glimpse of a huge waterfall across the valley then snow capped peaks, then dense, green forest, and finally a view of the lake below.
As I hike the last half hour to the summit using the rope system to pull myself up the steepest sections of the trail I pass two women eating lunch.
“There’s a young man up there,” one women says to me seriously. “Just so you’re prepared.”
“Okay,” I say, unsure if she thinks he’s going to try to rape me or date me. I head up the trail and a grouse flies up from the brush.
“You’d make an excellent hunter!” The other woman says.
“Best vegan hunter you’ve ever met!” I call back.
I reach the top in no time at all but there’s no one there, young man or otherwise. I peer pessimistically over the cliff faces. Where could this mystery hiker have gone? There were posters in the ranger station of a young woman who went missing in the park a few weeks ago. The fog is still thick and it feels a little eerie up here in a cloud on top of a mountain with an MIA hiker who’s reputation, unclear though it is, precedes him. I rehydrate, shove a granola bar into my mouth, and head back down the mountain. As I do, the clouds begin to clear in earnest and by the time I reach the bottom of the trail the sun is shining on the glacier blue lake and the mottled sunlight lays a patchwork of light at my feet. My legs are pleasantly heavy and my brain a little less of a whirlwind than it was pre-hike.
While I was at the ranger station this morning I asked the ranger who recommended the Storm King trail if my plan of action to see the park today made sense.
“I’m planning on driving down to the southern half of the park to see the rainforest after the hike and then head back to Seattle from there.” I say.
“Oh, I mean, if you really feel like you have to see it…” she says.
“The rainforest?” I say. “Are you serious?”
She stares at me.
“Um, I do, yes, I have to see it.”
She shrugs. “Well, don’t try to get back to Seattle on the southern route, come back up the way you came. There’s really nothing to see down that way. You’d be better off staying up in the north for the whole day if you ask me.”
“Well, thanks for the advice,” I say as I back slowly away from her.
Do I have to see the rainforest?! It’s a RAINFOREST. OF COURSE I HAVE TO SEE IT. And thank god I ignored her because walking through a forest of towering redwoods at dusk gives meaning to my life. The trees are impossibly high and I’m reminded of the book my friends Ben recommended to me last summer called Wild Trees. It’s all about scaling redwoods and it was the book that inspired me to collaborate with a professional tree climber last fall to learn arborist skills and spend the night in an elm tree in Ithaca.
I am feeling happily miniscule and so deeply engrossed in reimagining the ecosystems high above me from what I’d read in Wild Trees that I almost don’t notice the doe standing in front of me on the trail. She’s looking right at me with her big doe eyes and after a moment she begins to walk slowly and precisely in my direction. As surely as Harry Potter knew that the patronus doe that appeared to him in the woods meant him to follow her, I know that this doe has something to tell me. She looks at me, I look at her, and she heads silently into the forest. I watch her go, knowing that if she glances back at me I will follow without hesitation. She doesn’t look back but I feel like I got her message anyway and I walk on feeling calmer and more centered than I’ve felt in months.
There’s something about seeing big trees and big animals in the wild that is transformative. There’s such grace and power and efficiency in a deer’s walk and a redwood’s sway that it’s impossible to be unaffected. I’m walking straighter, softer, and with a heightened sensitivity that lasts far beyond our brief moment of connection.
I ignore the ranger’s advice to return to Seattle via the ferry route and instead take the faster southern route that also happens to take me through the coastal portion of the park. It is about as far from “not much to see” as is aesthetically possible. The sun is shining, the waves crash against the rocks, and old growth forests rise up from the side of the road. I call my mom to tell her I’ll be back in Seattle in 4 1/2 hours for a very, very late dinner. She still have two sessions to go on her conference docket for the day so I take my time driving along the Washington coastline, taking in the full scope of “nothing to see.”
