A Climate Change

Travel and Commentary from the Olympic Peninsula

By Mark Smith

October 6^th, 2022

Trying to weather our climate.

After yet another Southern California winter and spring with very little rain, Nancy and I felt parched from the outside in. We needed to get re-acquainted with water.

We needed a climate change. At least for a week.

So we planned a trip to the northwest corner of Washington State. We'd previously explored the islands just west of Seattle, also the San Juan Islands and Canada's Vancouver Island. But we'd never ventured into the dense rain forests within Washington's Olympic Peninsula, nor experienced its wild coastline.

And off we went.

First stop: Lake Crescent

We settled in at Lake Crescent Lodge, about six hours' drive northwest of the SeaTac airport. This served as a perfect base for exploring Olympic National Park.

Fog rolled in and out. Geese grazed the lakefront. Rain fell. It was cool and quiet. And it was peaceful: The barely-there cell reception turned our smartphones into dumb cameras - or for me, a handy paperweight back at the room.

It’s why they're called rain forests.

Hiking the Olympic rain forests was like exploring a giant terrarium. We felt refreshingly insignificant amongst the scale of the forest and the speed at which it was growing, dying, decomposing and re-generating itself. The rich earth was soft and damp; water was all around us, dripping from the mossy overstory and flowing around us in streams and waterfalls. Ferns seemed to grow as we stood and watched.

The not-so-Pacific Ocean

Next up was Kalaloch, an oceanfront lodge on the far west side of the Olympic Peninsula. We wanted to see the stormy Pacific in action.

Our time there felt exceptionally wet, even for two people who'd been craving water. It poured nonstop. From the faint bit of light coming from the sky, it was impossible to tell the time of day or even the direction you were facing.

The coastline was rugged, especially compared to Southern California's. Beach signs warned us that we could be crushed between giant logs that floated in on the tide. We found a rich variety of tidepool inhabitants - some resembling sand-filled gravel-coated donuts with whiskers; others looking like the prehistoric organisms that first crawled out of the Earth's oceans.

Lake and sky

Driving down the coast we arrived at Lake Quinault Lodge, a beautiful structure built in 1915. From this base we visited the incredibly dense Hoh Rain Forest - even wetter than those near Lake Crescent - and then dried out by the lodge's stone fireplace. Dramatic clouds moved across the sky, dropping torrents of rain. As we hiked along, Quinault Lake lapped up to, and then over, the lakeside walking trail. And then, near the end of our stay, the sky broke and a brilliant light appeared briefly. I believe it is called "the Sun."

Crossing over

Our trip led us to Astoria, Oregon, across the Astoria-Megler Bridge that spans the amazingly wide and powerful Columbia River.

From our room we could watch the big freighters float slowly downriver, cross under the bridge and disappear out into the open ocean.

Water: Too much, and not enough

The parts of Washington we visited are amazingly green and beautiful. But it's too rainy to live there, at least for me - and maybe even for many Washingtonians.

In planning our trip I followed the area's weather, and from December through May there were just a few days when it WASN'T raining. Then a few months before our trip, Washington had such heavy rain that the resulting floods closed down parts of Highway 5 - the state's main thoroughfare - and Highway 101, the route encircling Olympic National Park.

Meanwhile, California's climate is getting noticeably warmer. We’re stuck in a years-long drought, with dried-out rivers and dying trees. And our future holds the potential for a water shortage that could be disastrous.

If we all take a common sense approach to water conservation, we can improve California’s situation. But personal action won't be enough. Bigger ideas are also required.

How about this one, which occurred to us as we hiked the Hoh Rain Forest: The three West Coast states will join in building a gigantic aqueduct running from Washington, through Oregon and down to the Golden State. This deep, miles-wide canal will be engineered to carry an enormous amount of excess water from Washington south to where it’s needed - helping California to get greener, while also being used to extinguish the increasingly dangerous wildfires along the way. This is a huge project but it's not rocket science, and if the engineers need any guidance, they can Google "Roman aqueducts from 2,000 years ago."

And then, in the spirit of creative / improbable measures: In addition to relieving Washingtonians of their excessive water, we will give them our month of September. Yes the whole month.

It's a win-win: They get some much-needed light and warmth; we dispense with 30 of our most problematic weather days - those hot, end-of-summer dog days when we’re wishing for the cooler temperatures of Fall.