The Hoh Rainforest 51 miles
In the continental US, rainforests can only be found on the Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Rainforest is named after the Hoh tribe of Native Americans. “It receives up to 12’ of rainfall annually and has mild winters and cool summers producing the giant conifers that dominate this forest. Bigleaf maples and vine maples host an abundance of epiphytes (plants growing on other plants) that give the rain forest its characteristic look and ethereal quality. A plethora of mosses, ferns, and plants compete for space on the forest floor, grazing elk keep the understory open. Dead and downed trees decay slowly and support new life as ‘nurselogs.’ The eternal cycle of life and death is strikingly apparent in this magnificent forest community.”
Since this forest was in a national park (ONP), we had the benefit of signage to explicate the theories Penny and I had been postulating in the last few days. The downed elders were called nurse logs and here we witnessed “colonnades”, when a nurse log successfully nourishes a new generation of 8-10 trees along its entire length, each on “stilts” in a straight row. It appeared that after the elder had sufficiently decomposed, the new trees bored roots through it so that the new generation were linked to one another in the space the elder once occupied! That’s quite a metaphor.
Another fascinating aspect of this park was the iridescent moss growing over the maples. We struggled to catch the color digitally, but trust me, it was trippy! The epiphytes look like the Spanish moss which we saw in the bayous down south. I can’t imagine what the maples look like when they leaf out! A very pretty wood pecker was working in this area.
Finally, the conifers were giants; We’d fall over backwards looking upward to see the tops, but they were in such close proximity, you couldn’t see above the canopy. These mammoth trees were 200’ and more. One fell right next to the trail and broke into segments 20-30’ long and was measured at 192’, but the top was never found. It is probably still up above the canopy!
Stilts: the nurse log has vanished.
A colonnade of trees
By the way, our good blessings continue; we had no rain while visiting the rain forest! The road had been closed earlier in the week, but opened today, on our last opportunity to visit on this trip. What can I say? Call it luck, clean living, karma, charm, blessings, or grace, we speak our gratefulness everyday for the opportunities we have been given, the courage to act upon those opportunities, the wondrous gifts we have received, not due to our worthiness certainly, but I believe, in my humble opinion, due to our grateful posture.
The Hoh is home to approximately 400 elk. As we were leaving the parking lot, I told Penny, “I wish we would have seen some elk!” She is not very familiar with them and I was hoping for a close encounter for her to get a good look at one. About one quarter mile down the road two cows were standing in our lane. I was able to get out of the truck and snap a couple of pictures. Thank You!
A poem from the visitor’r brochure I quoted earlier:
When I stop to follow a great bole of spruce from forest floor to the upper canopy,
my perception changes and routine senses of scale and proportion slip away.
In the rain forest, thoughts intuitively yield to a slower and grander pace.
Tim McNulty