Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
In the top picture, rain drops have just started to pelt the side of the old moving van at the Kestner Homestead in Olympic National Park, but years in the rain forest has both figuratively and literally left waves of rust on the decaying truck. But then the rain started coming down in buckets and I retreated to shelter, before coming out for a few more pictures of the now soaked truck before heading back down the trail.
These wood sorrel leaves, wet with rain above a bed of moss, reminded me of butterflies with their wings outspread. I was hiking along the Kestner Homestead Trail in the Quinault Rain Forest after an earlier rain, and when I came back past the rain returned with me, pounding down in buckets. The leaves had folded in, still like butterflies, but the lens I was using wasn’t weather sealed and I hadn’t brought a backup. I was literally in the first few hours of my trip so I decided discretion was the better part of valor and didn’t photograph them with their wings down.
Mussel beds are one of my favorite parts of tide pools, as a slightly-claustrophobic introvert they remind me of crowded trains. There are a couple of trains that I try to catch on my commute as for whatever reason they are usually fairly empty at my stops, when most trains are quite crowded, and arrive and leave work at convenient times. I got to my stop this morning just before the 8:13 to Beaverton and almost have the entire car to myself.
The mussels are covered in acorn barnacles with some limpets and snails along for the ride. I don’t know what type of snails they are, frilled dogwinkles? Eroded periwinkles? Wrinkled amphissas? I do know this: A+++ to whoever came up with snail names, I love you.
Turns out there’s a tree growing inside. Also, the door’s off.
I was hiking the Hoh River Trail in the rain when I walked past an open area and was struck by this explosion of green, a young moss-draped tree arching in all directions. There were so many different shapes and sizes and textures of green, clover and maples and moss and ferns and the large trees beyond, all different ways life has adapted to live in this damp and verdant forest. If I could hike in only one type of terrain, it would be the forest, nothing restores my spirit like a walk in the woods.
Shakespeare on the beach
Kalaloch’s Beach 4 in Olympic National Park may not be cleverly named but it has wonderful patterns created long ago by piddocks digging into the sandstone. The ground underneath them was moving slowly, slowly even for shellfish, and now sits just above sea level, out of the reach of even the highest tides. Everything is relative, you’ll find much more ancient signs of ocean life high up in the mountains, as the older rock is pushed upwards by the shifting land below.
Piddocks are still around today, still digging into sandstone, you can read more about them at the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife’s piddock information page.
I was first introduced to Langston Hughes by a poem posted on a neighborhood tree less than a year prior so I was delighted when I visited the Hoh Rain Forest to see they had placed signs with poetry along the Hall of Mosses Trail, with one of those poems being Langston Hughes’ “Snail”, placed before this tree that arched from one side of the trail to the other. As you can see from the puddle in the trail I finally got my rain in the Hoh Rain Forest after years of trying, and you can see from the picture below that the sun came out at times too.
Little snail,
Dreaming you go,
Weather and rose
Is all you know.Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery
“Snail” by Langston Hughes
It rained the entire way on the short hike down to Sol Duc Falls, not surprising since I deliberately planned this trip around rainy weather. I was looking forward to seeing the falls, having visited them a few times before, but my heart sank on the approach.
The bridge. I always forget about the bridge.
I love the bridge itself, sturdy and wooden and water-soaked like the enveloping forest. The problem is the deep and narrow chasm that lies below as I’m rather scared of heights. Add the deafening roar of the falls and it overwhelms my senses. I screwed up my courage and walked across without looking down and started taking pictures of the falls from the other side, a little out of sorts and finding it hard to concentrate.
A large family was there already (or arrived shortly thereafter, the visit is a bit of a blur in my memory). You can see a few of them on the bridge at the top of the picture, unwitting models that provide a sense of scale. They were lovely folks and helped me relax a little bit. When I decided to head back to the car, I gathered my courage once more and made a beeline across the bridge. The family had all gathered on the bridge for a picture and as I passed asked if I’d mind taking a picture of their group. I froze in place and couldn’t say anything. I think they thought they might have offended me with their innocuous request so I quickly stammered that I’d be happy to take their picture but I had to get off the bridge.
Once on the other side they handed me their camera, a Nikon unfortunately as I shoot Canon and the controls are similar yet different and I had been struggling to shoot even with a camera familiar to me. Hopefully the picture came out well enough, looking at the result on the camera at least you could tell they were having a good time. I hope they were happy with it because they made my visit more enjoyable and now I can smile when I look at this picture and think about the bridge, at least until the next time I have to cross it.
A gathering of chocolate limpets (I think but don’t quote me on it) on a rock in the tide pools of Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park. I intended to reach the tide pools at low tide that morning but I wasn’t feeling well and arrived a bit late, missing the lowest tide but still able to see some of the creatures higher up in the pools. I haven’t spent much time photographing tide pools but I’m interested in doing more of it, so part of this visit (and a later visit to the redwoods) was getting some experience in the tide pools, learning to see what creatures are there so that on future visits I’ll have a better idea of what to photograph.
Even though there weren’t many pictures on it, my tide pool page on my old site was one of my most popular. I do miss sometimes the structured pages of that site so perhaps I’ll bring them back for some animals. They’re probably too much work for me to replicate the entire structure of the old site, and I’m not sure how to even do it with this setup, but I’ll look into it when time allows. If I do it pictures of the pets and of tide pools would probably be first.
Boolie 