Adventure Log: Carkeek Park, Seattle

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Blog, writingdownthestory in Photography

Tags

#adventurelog, #daughteronduty, Adventure Log, Carkeek Park, Daughter on Duty, grandchildren, Mother's Day, seattle, Stellajoe Staebler

“Stellajoe!” my father used to say, “How would you like to live in a place like this on a day like this?”

It’s become my mantra. I would like to live in a place like this, especially when the sky is blue, the trees are bursting into green and pink and red, the rhodies are stuffed with pompoms of bloom, water is sparkling, the mountains are still brilliant in their white garb of winter. Pacific Northwesterners are the luckiest people on the planet. (I know, people elsewhere think they are the luckiest, which is a happy thing.)

I spent last weekend in Seattle. Friday the Littles’ daycare was closed and I had them both, all day, by myself. They were, um, energetic.

It wasn’t cold, Elliot just likes his new jacket. And I couldn’t find his sweatshirt.

The bakery.

Gigi needed a break.

Grabbed those bananas himself when my back was turned.

Elliot, budding creative chef, made a pb/jelly/green bean/carrot sandwich for snack (after not eating the pbj sandwich at lunch).

Beautiful, but he declared it “yucky.” Said the green beans were old.

Making a Mother’s Day card while the moms went to a spin class.

Saturday was Adrian’s second birthday.

Another stunning creation by Mama Wynne. It was, by Adrian’s choice, a Dog Party.

Best ever gift from Aunt Becca and Gigi.

Sunday was my first motherless Mother’s Day. I had planned this weekend long before I knew last Mother’s Day was to be her last. I was a little anxious, and a little defiant when I put it on the calendar. What if there are no more years after this one to celebrate my mother, and I’m selfishly off wanting to be the mother for a change instead of the daughter? What if she’s having a bad day and I have to cancel my plans at the last minute?

Last year, one year before she left us.

To have been freed last month of these dilemmas will, I think, continue to cause me wonder for a long time. I can go off on an adventure without planning ahead, without the possibility that I will have to cancel, without having to watch the clock to return in time to visit her or relieve Rebecca of responsibility. I’m not wishing for those days back; don’t make me into some paragon of regret that they are over. (You’ve read my blog, right?)

But to spend days like this in a place like this, I can’t but think of her, and of my father, with gratitude for their quest to move to the corner of the country, to love it, to instill that love in me and my family. I suspect I will hold them with me everywhere I go.

We went to Carkeek Park. I had never been. It is, incredibly, ten minutes from my daughter and daughter-in-love’s home. And it was a sparkling day.

Teaming with life,

(sea cucumbers)

(anemone)

and love.

I’ve been digging through my mother’s scattered collection of favorite poems, quotes, and her own prolific writing looking for ones my sisters and I will use in special tribute at her memorial service next month. I found notes she wrote about me describing what was blooming two or three springs ago, she wishing she could be out in the glory, that she could see it through eyes that had become pale and cloudy. I hope she is in it now, and in her own glory.

Meanwhile, the weeds are growing. And I’m not out there pulling them. Last winter’s blow down (and that from the year before) still hasn’t been picked up. The hawthorn and the apple trees didn’t get pruned again and are now infringing on the view. The out-of-control vinca is climbing into the lilac. Blackberry vines are growing through the rhododendron. I still haven’t planted flowers, squash, and beans in my garden. I miss winter.

The Joy of Life

How sweet is Life, how beautiful!

Go, happy life, and say to Death –
“I gave this woman sufficient joy
To last her for a thousand years.”

Stellajoe Staebler
June 2008

A place like this, on a day like this. Happy Mother’s Day, Mama. I love you.

Adventure Log: Lake Quinault & Kalaloch

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, beach art, drift logs, Kalaloch, Kalaloch Creek, Kalaloch Lodge, Lake Quinault, nature's art, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Pacific Ocean

My adventure this week turned out to be a pilgrimage to honor my parents, though I didn’t know that when I chose it. I was in a quandary about where to go as I have a stinkin’ cold, my first in more than a year. I couldn’t afford to be sick when I had to be with my mother nearly every day. Now that responsibility is over and whammo, out of nowhere. Anyway, the idea of the lawn in an Adirondack chair in the sun at the lodge had high appeal. Maybe a walk in the rain forest. Or not.

My mother and I stayed at Lake Quinault a couple of times when I came home for visits after my father died. She sprang for meals in the dining room at a table by the window, me watching the light change over the lake and the hummingbirds at the feeders hanging from the eaves, she with her back to the light.

It was cloudy when I got up. What? I checked the forecast again. Sun coming soon at home, but not until 11 at the lake. No worries. I love sitting in the lodge; I went several times a few winters ago, driving two hours to write until time to drive back home and make dinner for my mother. I adjusted my vision to a fire in the huge fireplace. I wanted to work on my part of my mother’s eulogy anyway.

When I arrived at nine the fireplace was out of commission for chimney cleaning. Great. I anticipated noise and soot. But it was fine.

I finished my eulogy draft at noon and there was still no sign of sun. I decided to go to Kalaloch (pronounced Clay-lock), 30 minutes up the road. It was my parents’ favorite beach. We went to other beaches when I was a child. Ruby, the next one up, is my favorite; Rialto, a little farther north takes longer to get to because of having to skirt around the Quinault Tribe reservation; camping at Moro. But in their golden years they stayed in the cabins at Kalaloch; and my mother and friends went there for their private Purple Arts Festival for several years.

I ate my lunch in the car because it was overcast and looked too cold to sit on a drift log. As I sat looking out over the river to the Pacific Ocean, I read my 2500 word eulogy aloud to time it. Fifteen minutes. Going to have to cut. Don’t want to.

Kalaloch Creek

Turned out it wasn’t cold at all, when I finally went down off the bluff and into nature’s art gallery.

Paying homage.

The beach was strewn with millions of razor clam shells (I think) with brittle translucent sails attached, as if set to lift them up in the next storm and transport them elsewhere. I have never seen such a sight. In death, they were the most beautiful thing.

I walked a ways down the beach, first on the logs as I did as a child—going forever without touching ground—then on the sand past the ancient storm-tossed root sculptures, marveling at the trees that cling to to the cliffs in spite of erosion. (Once again, I forgot to look for the so-called “tree of life” across the creek in the other direction. Next time.)

Stegosaurus. Now that you know, you can’t not see it.

The trees remind me of my mother holding onto life: “I will not fall, I will not fall.”

I don’t know when I last found a sand dollar. It seemed like an omen to something good.

I made a cairn to honor my mother and father. They each, in their own ways, found a delicate balance between life and death in their last years on earth.

Flutterby’s first trip to Mama Ocean.

When I returned to Lake Quinault, the sun was out. I wanted never to leave. I’m plotting a camping trip soon. It feels strange to have this freedom to do whatever and go wherever I want without making arrangements for my mother’s well being. I think it may take a while to embrace it.

Adventure Blog: Packwood Lake

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, death of a parent, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, hiking in the PNW, Nissan Rogue, Packwood Lake, skunk cabbage, solo hiking, spring beauty

It’s an unpretentious name for a lake in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, Gifford Pinchot National Forest that’s been on my hike list for a while. After all, it’s just a public water source; undeserving, apparently, of a name like The Enchantments or something.

After six miles of forest service road above the tiny mountain town of Packwood, Flutterby and I arrive just before 9am to an empty parking lot with Mt. Rainier looming across the valley against cloudless blue.

It’s an easy 5 mile hike in to the lake, just 600 feet of barely noticeable elevation change, and I don’t really need my trekking poles, but I use them anyway. Really, I do need them. My joints are aging, they distribute the abuse; nevertheless, I am hurting by the time I get back to Flutterby. Ten miles is a long hike for so early in the season. And there is hiking on snow, and several blown down trees to scramble over.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m a slow hiker, I’m okay with that. I hike alone, who cares what my pace is. I don’t. Two, two and a half miles an hour gets me where I want to go. Of course I brake for photo-ops. I remember my mother’s frequent stops on family hikes for picture taking and plant identification. Drove me and my sisters crazy. And now I’m as obsessed as she was. Thank goodness for digital cameras. And solo hiking.

Snow melt has been recent along this trail, as noted by the flattened but not defeated ferns. (Is everything a metaphor for my mother’s old age and death?) The snow under the trees, and in patches on the trail the last maybe mile, competes for season’s rights with the lush green moss and budding shrubs, where death meets rebirth. The creeks are full as they tumble down from the top of the mountain, trickling across the trail where I rock hop across.

I look down at my feet to dozens of heart-shaped rocks. My mother collected them, so I look for one to take home and add to hers. But once picked up and examined, they merely look like rocks, so I leave them lie.

I arrive above the lake, sparkling and clear, Herself reflected right in front of me. I stop breathing for a minute.

When my breath returns, I continue up the trail that skirts the lake for a while, stopping when a serious blow down over a wide creek helps me decide I’m done. I go off-trail over to the lake where I sit on a log and eat my lunch mesmerized by the mountain. The blue sky. The clear lake. The green green. “Stellajoe,” my father would say to my mother, “how would you like to live in a place like this on a day like this?” I would! I do!

I sit on the log for an hour with my notebook and pen, writing a beginning of my part of my mother’s eulogy. I cry again for her loss and for my gain to have been her daughter; in gratitude that my parents migrated to this land where I can always find them in places of beauty.

The only people I encounter all day are a party of four that passes me on the way back, and their dog named Grace; and a party of two I meet an hour later, and their dog named Grace. Grace has walked with me for the past two weeks since my mother entered her final bit of the journey, when grace walked her home. I carried her with me today.

Adventure Log: Paradise

25 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Christine Falls, DeGoede Bulb Farm, hospice, Longmire, Mt. Rainier National Park, Paradise, Paradise Historic Inn, skunk cabbage

It’s been an amazing and exhausting week following the death of my mother early Saturday morning. More about that on Daughter on Duty tomorrow. After three non-stop days with my sisters, today I went with the breath and took an adventure day. Paradise seemed a fitting destination. It doesn’t need many words, other than to say I think it’s been four decades since I was there when the snow came down to the parking lot. And that was on the Fourth of July.

First stop: the DeGoede Bulb Farm in Mossyrock.

Flutterby’s first trip to Paradise.

The Inn, not open for business.

I didn’t know I was going to traverse the snow…

…but in my new boots, I went for it! Only broke through the crust a few times. Baskets on the poles would have been helpful.

Glacial water heading for Narada Falls. Couldn’t see it; snow blocking the view.

Christine Falls

Skunk cabbage on Trail of Shadows, Longmire.

From the porch at the National Inn, Longmire; with notebook and pen.

Back in Morton, where the mountain road meets the highway back to civilization, I followed this truck out of town. They provide equipment to hospice patients. The tears returned, the gratitude that my mother is free. That I am free. That I didn’t have to rush home for a visit to the Manor. I stopped for tulips in Mossyrock, along with a memorial hydrangea and my mother’s geraniums for the pots under her bedroom window that have held summer geraniums as long as I can remember.

Adventure Log: Shunpiking in Lewis County

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Centralia-Alpha Road, DeGoede Bulb Farm, Lewis County, Mineral School, Mineral WA, Mt. Rainier, Paradise, Salzer Valley, shunpiking, skunk cabbage, what is retirement

It’s raining and blustery this morning. Again. Although 10-day forecasts are notoriously unreliable in these parts, each time I check it there is one sunny day in 10. As I am both a fair-weather adventurer and a fair-weather gardener, at least this time of year when I am also content still to be cocooned with indoor projects, it’s a problem.

Last Monday Flutterby—my new monarch orange Nissan Rogue—and I headed north and west for a hike on the Olympic Peninsula, the first of what I hope will be a weekly adventure from now into autumn. (Read that one here if you missed it). I huddled inside the next three days as the spring monsoons drummed on the roof and spattered against the windows and the valley below the house turned to lake.

Friday we got a bonus sun day, warm even. I should have been fixing my garden gate, planting the beets and potatoes, cleaning up the property from the winter storms. But after an aggravating visit to my mother, full of demands and accusations and her own grumpiness, I was in a rainy mood and blew off the beautiful day. I stayed inside finally energized to do projects I should have been doing over the winter. (What a lot of shoulds in this paragraph.)

Yesterday I got a reprieve, another unexpected sunny day. And a Monday, adventure day! But there is all the work to be done outside. What to do? I check Weather Underground. The next predicted sunny day is a week from Thursday. I compromise: both/and.

Screen shot of 10-day rain forecast may not show on your phone.

I run out to the Manor first thing and find Mama alone in the dining room still dawdling over her scrambled eggs while a staff person vacuums around her. We walk a lap of the hall then return to her room to listen to bad knock-knock jokes from Alexa. “Alexa, tell me a funny joke!” “I don’t understand that,” Alexa retorts. As pissy as Mama was on Friday, she is sweet today and when I take my leave we are both in a good mood.

I spend three hours working outside, then shower and eat lunch. At 1:30 Flutterby and I head out across the lake in the valley. I look at this valley everyday, from the vantage point of the hawks and eagles, but rarely am I down in it. We cross the water and head into the hills, traveling south across the Alpha-Centralia Road, an I-5 alternative to get to US Hwy 12 that goes to the mountains. (See it winding up the hill in the photo above?) My destination is Mossyrock to see if the DeGoede bulb farm is in riotous tulip color yet. I’m quite sure it’s not, but it’s a pretty drive, which is the point of this shunpike adventure.

As we roll along, south and east, I decide to go somewhere else first, in the delicious freedom of being master of my destination. I have driven by the road to Mineral, (population 202 in the last census) countless times on my way to Mt. Rainier, but I’ve never driven into the town. It is home to the Mineral School, an arts residency program in the former elementary school. It is also home to what was the smallest post office in the country (retired now), according to a friend who delivers mail in the Seattle area.

I stay on WA 508 to Morton. We travel through bucolic farmland and wind through deciduous and hardwood forests, not yet showing much in the way of spring green despite all the rain. I round a curve and run into Herself, having forgotten she would be here.

I wait 20 minutes for a work crew to clear the road of a dead fallen maple trunk, finally getting one massive end lifted in the jaws of the bulldozer and chainsawing it into manageable chunks. In all that time only a handful of cars were lined up on both sides. This is rural Washington.

I’m enchanted by a watery grove of birches filled with the bright golden bloom of skunk cabbage. I pull off the road and revel for a few minutes.

In Mineral, I stop at Mineral Lake and feast my eyes on Mother Mountain. Now I’m sorry I didn’t blow off the driveway cleanup and head up to Paradise early—another hour away—which according to the webcam yesterday looks to have a couple feet of new snow. I haven’t been up there in the snow since the then boyfriend, later husband, and I took his Mid-west parents up for a fourth of July picnic, eaten in the parking lot because everything else was still under the white stuff. That was more than 40 years ago. Next time. I make a date with Flutterby.

We turn back toward home and skip over to Hwy 12 in Morton, heading back toward Mossyrock. There are no tulips yet, just vast fields of promise. That visit to Paradise will be timed to the bloom, perhaps at the end of the month. I’ll keep an eye on the 10-day, check the webcams, watch the farm’s Facebook page, make a plan; and then wait for what really happens. I guess this is what retirement is: not without work and responsibilities, but with opportunity to blow it off and live into spontaneity. Life is short, eat dessert first.

Adventure Log: Steam Donkey Trail, Olympic Peninsula

02 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Dosewallips River, Dosewallips State Park, Maple Valley Trail, Olympic Peninsula, Rocky Creek Falls, Steam Donkey Trail

Flutterby and I went on our first adventure together today! (Well, not counting taking my mom for an Easter Sunday drive. She loved the heated seats!)

There was snow on the deck when I left, but the sky was going blue. I did not start Flutterby from inside the house to warm her up before I climbed aboard. It was chilly out though—34º according the Flutter’s thermometer. Picked up my road latte at 8:20 and we were off up I-5.

Left the interstate at Tumwater and headed toward 101 N. and the sparkling Hood Canal toward the snowy Olympics and the town of Brinnon to Dosewallips State Park. Temperature up to 42º.

I hung my new Discover Pass from Flutter’s mirror and donned my knee straps, since the meniscus tear in my right knee has been bothering a bit after garden work. I skipped the ankle brace—didn’t have it, anyway, as it turned out. Took my trekking poles, but didn’t use them.

I’ve finally found some new hiking pants that fit my criteria; i.e. crop length, not grey, zippered pockets. I didn’t realize until I got them home that they matched the socks a generous friend gifted me with. And not until I put on my shoes today (that need to be replaced), did I discover they also match the pants. Matchy-matchy.

Washington Trails Association trip reports had confusing information about where to start the hike, so I just picked one: Maple Valley Trail. A mile or so in, I crossed the fire road to Steam Donkey, so named for the machine that dragged logs to the railroad—that also ran through the area—in the early 1900s.

The trillium were blooming at the lower elevation, but other than a few buds, not much else in the way of spring. I chased a flicker with my camera as it flew from tree to tree, but wasn’t able to capture it.

Nurse stump, dressed for the ball.

It was a perfect hike for the first of the season. Not too long, about 3-1/2 miles or so. A lovely pond, many bridges across streams. Much of it looked not unlike the woods behind my house, but it was good to be out in the air and the mountains. I’m hoping to beat my epic hiking record set last year, with both new and favorite trails. I started a month earlier, so I’m on my way.

Back at the campground, I ate my lunch at a picnic table then drove on up the highway to the Dosewallips Recreation Area and Rocky Creek Falls, behind the Rocky Creek hydroelectric plant, just a few hundred yards from the road. Breathtaking. Saw two gangs of elk along the road.

Dosewallips River

Rocky Creek

Rocky Creek Falls

Ended the day in Hoodsport with Lemon Lavender ice-cream as the cloud cover (the beginning of the next 10 days of it) began rolling in. Perfection. I love where I live.

Adventure Log: Grays Harbor & Nisqually Refuge

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Grays Harbor, Mt. St. Helens, Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Olympic Mountains, Pacific Ocean, Salzer Valley, Seminary Hill Natural Area, sunrises, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb, Westport WA

It’s been an aggravating week of technology failure, including (still unresolved) loss of internet at home. On the up side is WiFi is back at the Manor, and along with it, Alexa is back in Mama’s room. She loves Alexa. Visitors are treated to her rendition of Star Spangled Banner. Now I just have to learn how to program her to do things that Mama would enjoy and that would be helpful. More technology. Ugh.

I’ve had a full two weeks of guests in the Airbnb, a good thing; and lots of cleaning, laundry, and baking.

The happy news is the rains stopped on Monday and rather than do the yard and garden work that is getting out of hand, I got out of town for a drive through the valleys of Lewis County to Grays Harbor and the edge of the continent.

And a best friend from Raleigh made a 24-hour visit on her way to British Columbia. On the way from and back to the airport, we stopped at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. In between walked in the woods behind my home. We talked and talked, diving quickly into the depths of our lives. I love where I live. And I miss my dear friends. A few hours with Grace reminded me of the loss.

And then there is this…

Highway 6, heading west at dawn.

Morning has broken.

Dancing.

The view from sea.

Nisqually Wildlife Refuge

Thousands of Canada geese flew in.

Raindrops on reflection

Grace and me in the Seminary Hill Natural Area.

No place like home.

Adventure Log: Nisqually Delta

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Great Blue Heron, Great Horned Owl, Nisqually Delta, Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Olympia Washington

I have taken my sweet time honoring my promise to myself to log more winter adventures, but I took the first step today. It was a nearby destination; just up I-5 to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. I hadn’t even quite finished my 16-ounce latte when I arrived. I left home before dawn, hoping for a sunrise; but there was no color this morning (nor sun, until I got home), but it didn’t matter.

The Delta is comprised of nine unique habitats: the Nisqually Flats, shrub, coniferous forest, freshwater marsh, salt marsh, open saltwater, rivers and creeks, mixed grasslands, and riparian woodland. Dikes and boardwalks provide limited access to the eight square miles of the Refuge.

I beat the crowds for a ringside view of bathing and breakfast for some of the 200 species of birds that visit the Refuge over the course of the year.

Did I see a thousand geese? If you count the cacophonous announcing of unseen presence, I surely did. Too bad you can’t take an audio photo.

I wish I knew the names of all the ducks, perhaps a new mission is to learn them. Here’s a start.

Merganser

Upside Down Duck

American Widgeon

Charlie’s Angels

The sweet sandpipers and the brilliant white gulls. How do they stay so clean?

The Great Blue Heron. Really, is there a more cool bird? Certainly none better dressed. Or more photogenic.

How the Great Blue got its name.

And a special treat, seen through my zoom lens and only because of the birdwatchers who have super human spotting abilities: a Great Horned Owl.

I didn’t get the sunrise today; and the ebbing tide—halfway between high and low when I got there—revealed more mud, less water, than I had hoped for. I’ve never been there at high tide. But the Refuge is only a latte away; I can visit again and again. Once a month sounds about right. I’ll be watching the tide table and the forecast.

Adventure Log: Willapa Bay

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 21 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Cape Disappointment, Discovery Trails, driving on the beach, Long Beach, North Head Lighthouse, Oysterville, Raymond on the Willapa, road trips, sloughs, Tokeland Washington, Washington Hwy 6, Washington rivers, Willapa Bay, Willapa Hills, Willapa River

After the weekend monsoon, it’s been a glorious week. I decide to play hooky from yoga on Thursday (though that also means no Daughter on Duty blog post and no Trader Joe’s for wine—which will be a crisis tomorrow) and take a road trip with CuRVy. I’ve been wanting to return to Willapa Bay, and on this beautiful autumn day it’s a no-brainer.

It was a sparkling diamond-studded hoar frost morning that day I went to Tokeland, on the north side of the bay, in 2013, and I was enchanted. I returned one other time with the summer crowds (less memorable) to visit Long Beach and Cape Disappointment on the south side of the bay (so named for a British fur trader’s failure to cross the Columbia in 1792, a few years before the arrival of Lewis and Clark).

The long, pencil-thin strand of Long Beach Peninsula—at 28 miles claimed to be the longest continuous sand beach in the United States— is Not My Beach, with its barren expanse of sand between ocean and bay providing a super highway for people loath to leave their vehicles. But I don’t go for the beach; I go for the drive through farm land and rolling hills. I go for the dots of small towns Highway 6 winds through: Adna, Meskill, Dryad, PeEll, Walville, Frances, Holcomb, Menlo, Willapa, Raymond, Nemah Junction, Naselle.

I start out—with my road trip latte, of course—under disappointing overcast skies, but with the promise of blue. As I turn west off the interstate, a few miles from home, I soon begin to see the sky clearing in the distance. Just west of Labam, I’m under a cloudless canopy.

Willapa Hills

The beach is my destination only because that’s where the road ends, and I’m in no hurry to get there. As I cross the Chehalis River on Highway 6, I begin the 100 mile journey that crisscrosses waterways from creeks and sloughs (rhyming with through, not with tough, a testament to our confusing language) to rivers; all of them, however small, christened with a name as they make their unhurried meander to a confluence with the mighty Columbia or an escape into the Pacific Ocean. My mother—my favorite naturalist—tells me there are more varieties of birds and waterfowl in this area than in any one other place in the country.

I pull off the road and walk to the bike/foot bridge over the Willapa River, part of the Discovery Trail system. I cross the Willapa River two more times, and the South Fork Willapa. I drive up to a hillside cemetery in the lingering thin veil of fog and gaze across the verdant valley of grazing cows to the sun shining a golden light on the tops of the Willapa Hills.

Discovery Trail

Willapa River

“Willapa” is one of my favorite place names in this state of fabulous names. The inhabitants of the area clearly love it too. The largest town along the river is locally known as “Raymond on the Willapa”; and there are any number of businesses and parks named Willapa this and Willapa that.

The road crosses other rivers too: North Nemah, Mid Nemah, South Nemah, and Naselle; Bone, Niawiakum, and Palix. The sloughs: Skidmore, Potter, Caruthers, Stuart, Tide, Jorgenson, Teal, Greenhead, hop and skip with the creeks: Hope, Rock, Fern, Pinnock, Half Moon, Forks, Trap. It’s a perfect environment for cranberry bogs, and they are here too.

I head to Oysterville first where blue meets blue, at the northern tip of the peninsula, at the urging of a friend, and realize I have been there before.

Oysterville

I drive back south to Long Beach for lunch, then park at the access to the sea. I have no interest in being on the sand with the cars, but the Discovery Trail extends the entire length of this strip of land through the dunes to the rainforest at the southern end. I walk north on the boardwalk then down to the bike path and wander back through the grass on the footpaths. I can hear the pounding surf, but I can’t see the cars unless I top a dune. It’s a weekday, it’s not summer, there aren’t many cars; but still it would annoy me if I let it. I don’t, it’s too beautiful a day, and I feel no need to walk across the tire tracks to touch the glistening water.

Long Beach

It’s mid-afternoon and I am tempted to return east to “Raymond on the Willapa,” then back west on the other side of Willapa Bay to Tokeland, a tiny fishing village (and casino, but that’s not my interest any more than the ocean is); I love the drive with more creeks and sloughs, and the old clapboard hotel. But I decide to go south instead to Cape Disappointment, at the peninsula’s southern end.

I remember, too late, my vow last time I was here and discovered trails through the rain forest and down to the driftwood beach, to make this a hiking destination. Head slap. And now I don’t have time, again. But I stop at the Beard’s Hollow overlook, then, making use of my annual Discovery Pass—that I finally find, not in the glove box with the broken latch, but in the drawer under the seat—I visit the North Head Lighthouse where I watch Coast Guard helicopter training maneuvers, and walk through a bit of the forest to Bell’s Overlook then on to another walk through forest and swamp to the dunes.

Beard’s Hollow

From Bell’s Overlook

North Head Lighthouse

Next time I will remember just to come to the Cape! But now it’s time to head back over the rivers, creeks, and sloughs to my home on the hill. What a day for a daydream. I love where I live.

Willapa Bay

Adventure Log: Paradise 2—Saying “Yes” to the Call.

29 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Adventure Log, Autumn, autumn color, Golden Gate Trail, marmots, mountains, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Rainier National Park, Pacifc Northwest, Paradise, Skyline Trail, solo hiking, Tatoosh range

I wanted to see the color of autumn at Paradise. Two weeks ago it had barely begun. (Read that log here.) Last week it snowed, right down to the parking lot. Monday and Tuesday it rained. Friday’s forecast is rain and snow and 20 degrees cooler, and the ten day forecast is freezing or near freezing temperatures every day. But Wednesday and Thursday the forecast was clear, sunny, and warm. The mountain was calling.

I shouldn’t have taken the day. I have a frighteningly long to-do list before I leave for North Carolina next week to see the bigs (my two older grandsons, whom I haven’t seen in over a year). Also it was yoga and Daughter on Duty blog day. But the mountain was calling.

My mother’s caregiver called in sick for the second time this week just as I was finishing a website project for work so I could get on the road. It was a project I got up at 5:00 to do because the day before my internet provider went down for 8 hours just as I figured out how to do what I needed to do. Rebecca was out of town for the day too. But the mountain was calling.

I picked up my road latte at 8:00 and headed down the interstate feeling a little guilty about leaving Mama in town alone. The hell with it. The mountain was calling.

For an hour and a half as I drove, my brain was on overload. How in the world was I going to get it all done? This was stupid and irresponsible. I should not have come.

Then came that view of Herself just north of Mineral. She in her new white coat (albeit a bit worse for the wear after the rain) rising to the blue sky above the foothills across a meadow. All the brain chatter fell away. I was practically orgasmic. This was the only thing I should be doing this day.

I flashed my senior access pass at the park gate and turned off my recorded book (about a woman trying to get her addled mother to move to assisted living, then dealing with her unhappiness about the horrible food while cleaning out her parents house in which they had kept every thing for 50 years). Time to breathe.

When I passed Christine Falls and the trailhead to Van Trump Park, I had another little niggle. Maybe I should have planned to go there, another feather in this summer’s “new trails” hat. But Paradise was calling. I’ll go to Van Trump next summer. Maybe when the wildflowers bloom.

I beat the crowds I expect to be descending on this, the last good day, and three days before the Inn and visitor center close for the winter. I scored a primo spot in the parking lot, knowing by afternoon the line of cars would extend well down the road.

I realized two weeks ago that my favorite part of Skyline Trail is the winding ridge section back down to the Inn from the top of Golden Gate Trail. It’s only about four miles, and, except for the beginning and end, from the Inn to Myrtle Falls—the darling of the flip flop and purse crowd—it’s the least populated. Ding ding!

I usually don’t take the Golden Gate, and I’ve never been up it. It is lovely, and far fewer people than the trails to Panorama Point.

Golden Gate Trail

It wasn’t a long hike, but there were lots of marmots begging to be photographed. (I trashed most of the photos. You’re welcome. You can see a few more here on Flora & Fauna Friday.)

This baby and her two siblings have some serious fattening up to do toot sweet.

And there was the couple from Florida I talked to for several minutes, who thought I was incredibly lucky to live here (yes, I am) and wondered where they should go in the rain tomorrow. And the couple who stopped where I was ogling the crimson slopes who turned out to live in Chehalis, my town’s sister city. Talked to them for a long time. So, it took almost four hours. Whatever. The mountain called, and I went.

High on a mountain (Golden Gate)

At first it seemed the colors seemed more subdued than previous autumn visits. And perhaps they were. And the meadows were smooshed from last week’s snow. But once I got up higher, and the sun rose higher, the huckleberry reds and Sitka mountain ash oranges started popping. Yes, this is what was calling.

Skyline Trail

As I finished up the last bit of my hike, a woman coming up the paved trail toward me stopped short and, with wide eyes and a shake of her head, breathily exclaimed to her mates, “Magnificent!” Oh yes.

Sadly, I arrived at Base Camp Grill in Ashford an hour before they opened. They close for the season on Sunday. The salmon burger and Rainier ale will have to wait until next summer. I’ll be there. For now I am complete; bring on winter.

Writing Down the Story

Category Archives: Adventure Log

Adventure Log: Carkeek Park, Seattle

Adventure Log: Lake Quinault & Kalaloch

Adventure Blog: Packwood Lake

Adventure Log: Paradise

Adventure Log: Shunpiking in Lewis County

Adventure Log: Steam Donkey Trail, Olympic Peninsula

Adventure Log: Grays Harbor & Nisqually Refuge

Adventure Log: Nisqually Delta

Adventure Log: Willapa Bay

Adventure Log: Paradise 2—Saying “Yes” to the Call.