The Ancient of My Familiar

There is a beach on the Olympic Peninsula on Hwy 101 at the mid-section of the Olympic National Park and Forest coast, just before the road cuts to the east again to go around the rugged shoreline and the Hoh Indian Nation land. There is a viewpoint above the beach where one can stand and look down on the fresh water stream that tumbles down from the mountains before slowing to a languid flow through the haphazardly tossed drift logs, joining the Pacific Ocean through the haystack gateway. The Ruby Beach is covered with stones, chiseled round and worn smooth by their trauma in the wild ocean before being spit onto the sand, only to be washed back for another round.

Driftwood is sometimes, in years following a quiet winter, absent from the beach; and  other times in great abundance－ making it possible to walk, perhaps for miles, on logs without touching the ground. Simple forts are built by children, and more structurally sound ones elaborately engineered by grownup children: the ONP version of beach cabanas built to shield one from the wind rather than from the sun. Some are merely functional, some boast decorative embellishment. Some are freestanding, some are built between the logs. Evidence of beach fires for keeping warm or roasting hotdogs and marshmallows dot the beach, tucked among the logs to protect the fickle flame from the elements.

At low tide, one can walk out onto the rocks at the base of the haystacks and find sea anemone, starfish, mussels, and other sea life showing off their brilliance as they grasp tightly for life onto the rocks as the sea washes over them and off. On the cliffs above the sea, ancient trees stubbornly grip life as the harsh winds of winter do their best to batter them into oblivion.

Ruby Beach, and others along Hwy 101, are the stuff of my familiar. After a hard week of wondering what in the world I have done uprooting my smooth flowing life, I decide I need another reminder. Sunday morning, early, I pack a sandwich, pear, dark chocolate, and water into my backpack; along with my camera and my rain jacket (which I almost, but not quite, needed), gas up CuRVy, and head for the ocean for a day of remembering. I drive west through the speed trap small towns along Hwy 12 turning north onto US 101 at Aberdeen/Hoquiam. I turn up my snob as I whiz past the closer boring fishing and clamming beaches of Ocean Shores and continue my trek through Humptulips. Just the difference in place names tells a story. The road stays inland around the Quinault Indian tribal lands, putting off the first ocean view.

As the road finally turns back west and rolls on through the tall second-growth, now protected trees, I stop at Lake Quinault Lodge, built in 1926, where Franklin Roosevelt stayed and got the idea over lunch to establish the Olympic National Park. The lodge is a familiar icon of my family history, along with the rain forest walk behind the 

Merchantile I take before continuing my journey. Now the road passes through private timber company replanted clearcuts. I can hear my father's proud voice giving our visitors a history of forestry as we drive to what they really came to see. Just as the road is about to run off the edge of the continent it turns north at Queets. I pass up Kalaloch (the first "a" is sort of silent), the only lodging on the coast; the beach that, because of the cabins perhaps, became a favorite of my parents after we children left home. I arrive, finally, at my own beloved beach.

I take the obligatory overlook photos, to add to my collection, then hike down to the water from the parking lot, stack a centerpiece of rocks, and sit on a log to eat my lunch. A father with four children enters from behind me, and the children clamber over the logs and bend to pick up rocks and throw them into the stream, chattering with delight at the pleasing plops. The father walks ahead, turning and admonishing them repeatedly to "Come on! Let's go to the beach." I don't get it. I watch them go, now and then throwing another rebellious rock into the creek. I don't suppose it would occur to them to ride logs in the river as we did, and as our own children did.

I am walking on a driftwood log when a couple about my age stops and comments on the chill in the air. "Yep," I respond, "It's not a fun-in-the sun kind of beach." I tell them about 
my love affair with Ruby Beach, and my return here from the east coast. Fires, walking on driftlogs, my father-sponsored contests to find the most perfectly round stone. I tell them about low-tide walking out to the haystacks, and the sea anemone in the pools in the rocks. I answer their questions about the origin of the driftwood, and the legality of fires and camping on the beach. "But," says the woman, after revealing that they are from Arkansas and were driving south on 101 and decided they might as well stop, "can you swim here?" "Nope," I say brightly, "too cold and there is a dangerous riptide." I think they are disappointed in this beach.

As I sit in my easy chair this morning－late with this blog due to my Sunday escape－as the sky clears above the fog in the valley floor, I reflect on the lessons of the Olympic Peninsula gardens. Some of the world's oldest trees live in the lush rain forest of the OP. The tree children spring from the mother and wrap their roots and branches protectively around her rich loamy trunk; holding her together in love as she moves into her ancientness. Someday the children, too, will be the ancients, in this national park where nature is allowed to take its own course. And their children will wrap their arms around them, as the grandparent finally becomes the soil, mingling with the spirits of those that came before, nourishing the generations to come. And a whole lot of rain makes it possible.

Like the river that delivers the winter snowmelt to the ocean, the path of our lives travels peacefully and unhindered some of the time, and tumbles over rocks and falls off cliffs at other points. Some days it moves through sunlight, and other days rain and fog dim what lies ahead. It is all inescapably part of the journey; and no one promised it would be easy.