Olympic Rainforest Study

Please help support six months of documentation of the drought and fire in the Olympic National Park. Funds will be used for equipment upgrade, shelter and food.

Below you can see excerpts from an article that appeared in The Real Change Newspaper in Seattle citing a trip I took with my friend and the reporter for the article, Rosette Royal.  The objective has changed slightly.  Rather than just concentrating on one river valley in the forest.  I plan to spend six weeks each in the Hoh, Bogachiel, Queets and Quinnalt valleys which are the four primary drainage points for the mountains on the western side.  This will give me a better comparative of the changes that occurring from one valley to the next.   

This first leg of the journey, the Hoh River, has begun.  You will receive updates each time I hike out of the forest to restock supplies.  Thank you to each of you are willing to give support.  My mother will be handling the updates as I check in with her during each restock. 

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Reposted from Real Change Newspaper (Seattle, WA)

"I’m not much of a hiker, so when Bryant Carlin forged off an established trail in Olympic National Park and led me through a tangle of moss and Pacific fern, I had to speak my mind.

Not that I was surprised. We were on day five of a nine-day journey along the Bogachiel River, one of the park’s major western waterways, and every day up until that point, Bryant had done something similar. He calls himself a “wilderness immersion photographer,” a job title that encapsulates his propensity to venture into the park and camp out for weeks, sometimes months, to pursue his dream of taking nature photos.

Our joint trip took place in late May, when daytime temperatures had already crept into the 70s, and part of Bryant’s focus was to capture how a drought was affecting Olympic National Park. But since the photos that tell a story aren’t always on the trail, Bryant steps off of it. Then he bushwhacks for a mile, two miles, three, four. It all depends on how long it takes him to find the just-right lighting for the perfect shot.

By this point in the trip, we’d already trekked off-trail multiple times in search of Roosevelt elk — which paid off, because, on our second morning, we’d encountered a five-member herd that moved with such seamless, silent ease through a stand of Sitka spruce and Pacific fern, the mammals seemed to disappear and reappear at will. 

And on the fourth morning, Bryant asked if I wanted to see a waterfall. Of course I said yes. So, not long after we left our basecamp, I followed him to Tumwater Creek, which we forded on a diagonal path to a point on the opposite shore. Then we returned to the original shore, crossing on another diagonal, to a spot farther upstream. We zigzagged our way up the creek, struggled through a thorny patch of devil’s club and, right when I’d reached the point of exasperation, it appeared: A waterfall of such power and grace, it silenced me. 

Or maybe I couldn’t hear my thoughts over the thunderous tumult of water. A dipper, a shorebird that springs up and down on its legs like a well-oiled piston, reveled in the spray. 

Nearby, a blooming cow’s parsnip, an umbrella-shaped ivory flower that makes Queen Anne’s Lace look like a dirty rag, peaked out from under a jumble of driftwood. I didn’t want to leave.

So I’d learned that when Bryant went somewhere, it usually paid off.

Then one day in June, a couple weeks after we’d left the quiet and solitude of the park and returned to the jackhammers and sirens of Seattle, Bryant left me a voicemail. There was a fire burning in Olympic National Park along a hillside of the Queets River, another of the park’s major waterways. “A fire,” he said, in a twangy Southern deadpan. “In a rainforest.”

Now, when Bryant and I had planned our trip, we almost decided to hike along the Queets, but for numerous reasons, we opted for the Bogachiel. This decision tormented Bryant. He wondered if maybe we would’ve seen the smoldering embers before the fire scorched hundreds of acres (state officials believe the fire along the Queets was started by a lightning strike in late May, the same time Bryant and I were two river valleys to the north). Who can say.

Now it’s August, and that fire, it’s still smoldering. But Bryant’s passion to tell the story of a drought in Olympic National Park, that burns with an undying heat. He plans to go back to the park and stay longer, a period of six months.

That’s a long time, and if I heard just about anyone else say he planned such a feat, I’d have my doubts. But I don’t doubt Bryant. Why? Because I spent nine days with him in the park, and every time he led us off-trail, he always got us safely back to camp, even if the excursion took hours. He possesses an uncanny ability to see the hidden trail, his vision amplified by 21 years undergoing photographic treks in the park. He knows those woods, and he knows how to survive in them. Remember that 2008 snowstorm, the one in late December, that shut down Seattle? When it hit, Bryant was camped out in the park.

I’ll be with him for some the time, since I plan to visit, to check up on him, to check up on the park. True, I won’t stay six months — the thought of it makes my whole body clench — but I feel there’s something more, some story, in Olympic National Park. 

Of course, it may seem off the wall to say I’d return with a man who bushwhacked some 40 miles through a dense rainforest. But really, Bryant was a fantastic, thoughtful guide, one who was adventurous but never reckless. My frustration came about because I couldn’t see where we were going. That sense was amplified because I was in a place I didn’t know. Now, I have a better idea where we’re going. Now, I’m willing to venture out there again because, after those nine exhausting, exhilarating, profound, terrifying, soul-stirring, sublime days, I have a better sense of what stories we may find there. 

Now, I can see that near-invisible trail that snakes through the woods a little bit better." -Rosette Royale