Mostly, today was a sunny day, and much less suitable for photography, because the shafts of sunlight in the forest make for a contrast too high to record well by any other light-sensitive medium than the human retina.
Our first excursion was to a huge cedar (Thuja plicata), not a
record-breaker apparently, and not at all high, since it was truncated
at about 80 feet, but immense in girth, showing its great age.
In the first thumbnail (big image,
small) you can see John Pineau standing
before an opening into the tree’s hollow, and glimpse Mary taking
a picture of him at the extreme left. We walked around the tree, climbed
on its lower reaches, and marveled.
Then we hopped into the vans for a 70- or 80-minute drive to the Hoh River
Valley, where the rainfall is even greater than around Kalaloch, where we
were based. And of course the moss is even thicker on the trees
(big image, small).
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In the Hoh Valley area, we came up to a stream flowing steeply. In the leftmost picture (big image, small), you can see a little way up; in the upper center picture (big image, small), we stragglers are crossing a bridge across the stream, while the vanguard starts to climb towards the falls a little way up, visible in the rightmost picture (big image, small). The lower center picture (big image, small) shows a different view of the stream from down below. |
For someone like me who grew up wandering in the Northeast forest, the appearance of this
forest is entirely foreign. Not only the things hanging off the boughs, not only the
entirely different kinds of trees (except for the two maples that grow here), even the
color is different, tending more towards yellow-green than the dark green of the East.
Much bigger and taller here than at home.
And as my old friend Theodore Palmer remarked, the species diversity, at
least as measured in the kinds of trees growing, is tremendously greater in the East
than here. And of course the preponderance of conifers here, as opposed to the
preponderance of broad-leaved trees at home. (Left thumbnail:
big image, small; center:
big image, small; right:
big image, small.)
An important and exciting part of today’s program can not be shown here: a ride in a raft through some rapids of the Hoh River. I wasn’t ready to risk my camera, so I left it behind in the van. Our trip down the Hoh was distinguished by our relatively inexperienced guide managing to ground the raft on a projecting rock. By a variety of random and irrational maneuvers, however, we managed to dislodge ourselves and get to the desired endpoint. Back to the Lodge for showers, drinks, and dinner, and we were ready for another day’s adventure.
Previous day’s pictures: morning, afternoon, evening; next day's pictures
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