Funny how distance and time can change a perspective. My wife and I always stood awestruck among the coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), thought we had never seen—or would ever see—forests as beautiful as those in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Olympic National Park changed our thinking.
Originally, we intended to stay in Port Townsend at the Point Hudson RV Park, and then take a ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria and explore Vancouver Island, Canada, but at boarding time our friends balked, so we remained in our own country and ventured into the Olympic National Park.
Just before a small speck-of-nothing-town called Elwha, we turned onto Olympic Hot Springs Road, which ambles through a dense forest of Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock.
My wife gasped. “This is what I always thought forests looked like in the Pacific Northwest.”
We stopped often along the road, and got out to gaze at the forest. Elwha enchanted us.
Undoubtedly, faeries, pixies, sprites, brownies, trolls, and the like inhabited the Elwha Valley. We love the redwood forests, but the temperate rain forests of Washington rendered us speechless.
Sadly, though, in the same way that Northern California forests and the mountains of Oregon are chipped and scarred by massive clearcuts, the lush forests of the Olympic Peninsula are surrounded by areas blighted by chainsaws and bulldozers.
Trees supply so much of our oxygen, and yet we cut them down the way chain-smokers rifle through packs of cigarettes. We’re cutting off our air supply.
Maybe we won’t nuke ourselves off the planet, or become extinct from climate change. Maybe we’ll suffocate.
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