Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A buffet of barnacles and limpets for a hungry sea star, with a subtle reflection in the tide pool below. It could just have well been a portrait of me as a child visiting the city pool where my grandma lived that had a high dive, I’d probably still be up there trying to convince myself to jump if not for the social pressure of knowing other people were waiting behind me.
Thousands of years ago a visiting Cyclops commemorated their love of the Pacific Northwest by crafting a self-portrait, the only known example still in existence today. I had the pleasure of photographing it in 2013 and was surprised by how delicate and fragile it was given the powerful force that created it, suggesting Homer’s portrayal of the Cyclopes as ignorant brutes in The Odyssey was little more than slander.
Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
Ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way
Watch the road and memorize
This life that passed before my eyes
And nothing is going my wayThe ocean is the river’s goal
A need to leave the water knows
We’re closer now than light years to goI have got to find the river
Bergamot and vetiver
Run through my head and fall away
Leave the road and memorize
This life that passed before my eyes
And nothing is going my way
Excerpt from R.E.M.’s “Find the River”
My leave of absence has been planned for a long time with only the timing uncertain. During that time my mind kept returning to one of my favorite songs by my favorite band, thinking of how I needed to step away from the hectic pace of normal life and let my mind be quiet and reflective for a while. The image that formed in my head was always this one, taken fifteen years ago of a shallow stream in the Hoh Rain Forest. If I was condemned to only visit one park for the rest of my life, it would be Olympic National Park. Whether I’ll ever get back is a mystery these clouded eyes can’t foresee, but if not I’m grateful for each of my visits to that wonderland.
Long ago a large tree fell over beside the Hall of Mosses Trail in the Hoh Rain Forest, forming a nurse log for younger trees to grow on. Some of those younger trees fell too and the park staff cut them with chain saws, they were probably blocking the trail, and behind them in the clearing you can see a tree that has naturally broken partway up the trunk. This will provide even more light into the clearing, allowing different types of plants and trees to grow before old giants eventually rise up again.
A simple portrait of the forest on a rainy day on the Sol Duc Falls Trail in Olympic National Park. It was really chucking it down at times and the polarizer on my lens had gotten blurry from the water and I couldn’t get it clear, yet I couldn’t get it to unscrew from the lens, so many pictures weren’t usable. Doesn’t matter, it was still great to be there, just being in a forest like this restores me. Even the trees that have died, broken, fallen over, are giving life to the sea of green that rises up in the open spaces. Many of these trees though will have lifespans that dwarf mine, if we’ll give them the chance.
I watched the window in the tree,
and wondered,
“Who is on the other side
watching me?”
While I love the old growth sections of the rain forest with its massive trees, I love the younger forest too reclaiming this little section of the Olympic peninsula in the Quinault Rain Forest. I stood beside this meandering stream, swimming in a sea of green, a smile on my face. A little ways away young trees grew, covered in moss of course because this is the rain forest, while ferns grew in the open spaces below. Ferns whose ancestors first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago, before the flowering plants, but some of which have survived through to today. Some of which I grow in my yard, wood sorrel too, my little reminder of the forests that hold my heart.
Seeing Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite broke my heart as a child but it saved my life as an adult. I was hiking along the Hoh River Trail, reveling in the rain in the rain forest, when I saw this unusual formation in an old tree. I stepped back when I recognized the pose, like Solo all those years ago, an unfortunate photographer must have turned his back too long to the tree and was captured, enveloped, erased, as he slowly disappeared into the tree. Thinking back to that scene I’m glad they didn’t freeze my beloved Chewbacca too, I think that would have radicalized young Boolie and sent him over to the dark side.
… without dogs and cats. Taken on a dark rainy afternoon on the Sol Duc Falls Trail in Olympic National Park.
Boolie 