Tag Archives: Olympic National Park

          Three decades ago, while wandering through the Himalayas, I ventured from the Vale of Kashmir to Ladakh, a mountainous realm where some of the planet’s tallest peaks rise above a high plateau. Now, thirty years later, as I gaze into Deception Basin in the Olympic Mountains, the scenery is so reminiscent of Ladakh—green vegetation fringing …

 One of the first things I spot when entering Olympic National Park is the gray shirt, dark forest-green trousers, gold national park badge, and iconic flat-brimmed hat of a park ranger in uniform. I have to wonder: What is it like being a ranger? What makes up their typical day? On a mission to find out, I call the park …

You want to keep moving forward, but shrubs form a wall at the forest’s edge. You see no way in. As you explore the tangled greenery, you push and probe. Two branches swing open like doors—the first with a gentle push, the second with a vigorous shove. The branches close behind your back as you wander into the mansion of …

Marymere Falls Located near Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, the short hike to Marymere Falls offers a delightful walk through a verdant rainforest. Along the way, the trail passes through a botanist’s dream: a garden of mosses and ferns beneath a majestic canopy of ancient trees. Viewpoints afford views of the rambunctious falls from above and below. Choose both. …

The Olympic Peninsula has the best place names of anywhere I’ve lived. Humptulips. Hamma Hamma. Wynoochee. Duckabush. My favorite – Dosewallips. At the end of autumn, when a window of clear weather opened, I traveled on a road alongside the Dosewallips River. Several years ago, a storm-swollen flow pulverized a stretch of pavement, closing the route to motorized vehicles. After …

After three years of avoiding COVID, it finally caught me. I got a Paxlovid prescription and went backpacking on the Olympic coast to battle the COVID demons at the ocean’s edge. Was it my fevered brain, or was the shoreline at Cedar Creek with its wave-sculpted sea stacks surreal? Did I actually see multiple orca pods hunting on two different days, …

The Olympic Coast is a sublime strip of wilderness beach that stretches for 60 miles, from the mouth of the Hoh River in the south to the legendary Shi-Shi Beach in the north. It is widely acknowledged to offer some of the best ocean-front hiking on Planet Earth, including three glorious point-to-point traverses that are, each in their own way, …

We expect judges to be impartial, to render calm decisions free of emotional baggage, but judges are human. There will always be some influence from their own experiences and personal outlook. Usually, they strive to limit that influence and render unbiased decisions. Their success in that exercise is as variable as the people who wear the robe.  William O. Douglas …

It has been five years since my thru-hike on the Pacific Northwest Trail  and I’m still trying to figure out how to talk about it. People say things like, “wow, that must have been fun” or “I wish I had time to do that.” They look confused when I can’t give them a simple explanation of what it was like. …

Some sophisticated folks that I know visit Paris every year. Some enjoy a yearly trek in Nepal. I find myself returning to a much-loved locale over and over too.  The lingua franca of my favored destination is the rhythmic unspooling of the ceaseless surf. I return to Shi-Shi Beach. How many times? I’ve lost count. Will I go again? Absolutely. …