By Guest Blogger Rachel MW Hahs, friend of the Fund
If there was ever a metaphor for whiplash, it is the first day of a backpacking trip in the Olympics with my dad. In the morning I wake up in Chicago, the early morning sun giving light to flat, straight city streets stretching for miles. From my home 10 miles west of the city, I can see the downtown Willis Tower casting shadows. It’s that flat. I jump in a ridesharing car and make my way to O’Hare Airport where I join thousands of people navigating their way to all corners of the earth.
I hop on a plane to Seattle. Flying always makes me nervous, so when I see the Cascades and Mount Rainier beneath me, I begin to take deeper breaths, leaving behind my city and my family and looking forward to the journey ahead. Leaving three children, a husband and a dog puts limits on the length of our trips, so for the last couple of years my dad has picked me up from the airport around 9:30 A.M. and we head straight to the Olympics to maximize our time there.
By the time we get our permits, eat lunch, drive to the trailhead and repack my backpack with my share of the food and equipment, it’s mid-afternoon. My surroundings are so different from those of just hours ago that I might as well be on a different planet. And while my senses bombard my brain telling me I’ve arrived, my brain’s still on autopilot. We have to get to camp, setup and eat before dark; the warm afternoon sun makes me feel tired and the pack is heavy. But as we put some distance between us and the parking lot, the intermittent sound and sparkle of water rushing to join the ocean, the sheer immensity of the trees, that tell-tale gap between the upper canopy and groundcover that I have only experienced in the Pacific Northwest, and that moss smothering maples with love like my children smother our dog…they all start to pierce my consciousness and I stop to take it all in.
Under the emerging night sky I’m exhausted but exhilarated, and unable to really wrap my head around the fact that it was only that morning I was in Chicago. The chilly air on my cheek and in my lungs and the hard ground beneath me bring me into the present and begin to rebuild that connection between my soul and the life with which we share this planet. Because this isn’t another planet, it’s home.
My father has been taking these journeys into the Olympics almost since my parents moved to Seattle in 2002. Accompanied by friends or family, or even going solo, he has explored most of its river watersheds. In his mid-70s, my dad conquers mountains with knees battered by a life of sports. Finding himself without a hiking partner a few summers ago, I volunteered to join him and we have backpacked together every summer since. To fit within my time constraints, my dad and I have planned our trips as in-and-out along the same trail. We take a few days to hike up a river valley, spend about three nights exploring the ridges, and take a couple of days to hike out. He has taken me along routes that get us up to his favorite crystal clear alpine lakes (North Fork Quinault to Marten Lakes), meadows bursting with wildflowers and huckleberries (Dosewallips), and to the park’s namesake, Mount Olympus (via the Hoh River Valley). And each summer, I agree, these places are incredibly special and I’m so grateful he has shared them with me.
This past summer we traveled the Hoh River Valley. I wanted to see the Giants and experience the temperate rainforest. The Giants did not disappoint, and I couldn’t help thinking about the concept of time; how a tree, rooted in place, may have a language we simply cannot hear or movements we cannot see because their conversations and journeys take place on a timescale we simply cannot comprehend. Either way there is a presence we can feel when standing within a fairy ring and a life force we can see when looking upon the glow emanating from within a maple grove on a cloudy day, both of which connect the forest to our souls in the present.
In a time when bagging a peak is the goal of most people walking along the trail, the Giants get the glory while the Miniatures go largely unnoticed. But in the forest the Miniatures are where the magic happens. The uncharacteristic few days of solid summer rain we experienced on our way up the Hoh allowed me to slow down and get down on the ground to discover the incredible complexity of the Miniatures blanketing the forest floor. Through my lens I could see spires of lichen and tophats of moss clinging to precious water as they feed on and break down the bodies of trees fallen long before our time, nurse logs that will remain long after we depart. Fungi sprouting glistening fruiting bodies through thick mats of organic matter, giving a temporary glimpse of the wood wide web connecting all forest plants right under our feet. It all serves to remind me: as hikers we are but brief visitors within a landscape that holds vast knowledge about what it means to endure.
The morning we had chosen to continue from Elk Lake to Mount Olympus was mercifully sunny. After tales of fog from passersby who had tried on the previous day to visit or even ski the Blue Glacier in the rain, I was blissfully happy to be able to see my feet and the trail ahead as it cut across steep terrain, and to ogle views of the vast valleys carved by Glacier Creek and its tributaries. A break in the trees yielded a fantastic view of the terminus of the White Glacier as it wraps into view at the headwaters of Glacier Creek. And while the trail up from Elk Lake to the lateral view of Blue Glacier was more demanding than any other stretch of trails I have traveled in the Olympics, it was well worth it. The immensity of the glacier was difficult to comprehend even while standing right upon its edge.
Yet despite being able to bask in the awesomeness that is the Blue Glacier, on this day my dad and I experienced a very different kind of whiplash. We were lucky enough to come across Dave Skinner who has been working on trails in the Olympics and assisting in research of the Blue Glacier since the 1970’s. Dave mentioned that in that time, and particularly in the last 30 years, the Blue Glacier has lost a significant amount of ice. The pace of this melting was brought home when my accounting of my visit to the Blue Glacier terminus (while my dad took a rest) simply could not be made congruent with my dad’s experience 10 years prior. (The Blue Glacier terminus lost 178 feet of thickness between 1987 and 2009. With melting rates doubling between 1980-2009, and quadrupling between 2009-2015, it’s no wonder my experience at the terminus was completely different from my dad’s.)
On our way back to Elk Lake, we stopped again at the view across the valley of the terminus of the White Glacier and compared it to a photo taken of the same view decades prior in our Robert Wood Olympic Mountains Trail Guide (pp. 304). To hear about the change is one thing; to see the difference in front of our faces was shocking. Once back at my parents’ home, we compared these pictures with my dad’s taken in the same place 10 years ago. This sequence of photos documents the rapid decline of the glacier not only within a lifetime, but just within recent memory. Indeed glaciers in the Olympics are not spared the effects of climate change – they are disappearing at an alarming pace throughout the park. For an ecosystem with residents with lives that span centuries, even millennia, this is true whiplash.
My dad’s knees are not what they used to be, so this year we took an extra half day to come down from our high camp to avoid the exhausting distance and breakneck pace we set for ourselves in previous years. It turns out that slowing down afforded us the space to enjoy the entire journey as much as the peak. Our last night we found an absolutely lovely campsite along the meandering river in the lower valley, where the sunlight dappled through alder trees and the breeze kept mosquitos at bay while drying our still-wet clothes. In this beautiful setting, we had time to reflect upon the mysteries of family and science, catch a glimpse of a river otter diving through the fast-moving water and share the morning moonset and sunrise with a buck.
As we walked out the last day, we were enveloped several times by a beautifully sweet and delicate fleeting aroma that we could not attribute to any one plant. I repeatedly stopped, closed my eyes and drank the air to bring this small part of the forest home with me. The forest itself seemed to be reminding us that life is sweet and the journey is to be savored.
Back in the chaos that is Chicagoland where native ecosystems are all but gone, I catch glimpses of Life’s magic in the way insects proliferate out of nowhere when I plant native prairie plants, or in the ethereal glow of a sugar maple preparing for a long winter’s sleep. These moments allow me, even if fleetingly, to connect back to the yearly dose of wonder I feel in the Olympics. But even as I revel in the beauty of the Olympics from afar, Mother Nature’s fist jumps out of my computer screen in the form of the White Glacier, reminding me that she is fiercely struggling to hang on in the face of the whiplash that is climate change. Not just in highly disturbed urban areas like my home, but also in places like the Olympics where the ecosystem’s complexity may help it endure the worst effects but the impacts are still being acutely felt. She is telling me it’s time to fight. I have resolved to be an active ally, to show up in solidarity with the sense of urgency required of this moment.
I applaud Washington’s National Park Fund for helping to strengthen and protect this special place. Where the Giants teach us about endurance and the Miniatures humble us with their outsized power. Where the “river voices” share dramatic origin stories with anyone who stops to listen. Where the air seduces travelers with its sweet nothings into lingering a little longer. Where time does anything but stand still.
Rachel is a mother of three beautiful girls, amateur photographer and lover of native landscaping in Oak Park, Illinois. In her spare time, she co-leads Biomimicry Chicago, is the creator of Think Biomimicry (a biomimicry blog and resource website), conducts original biomimicry research and develops novel frameworks on the topics of disruptive innovation and sustainable/resilient human built environments.