Lavender, Pines, and Pizza on the Olympic Peninsula

Following the advice of our eccentric tour guides in Freemont my husband and I set off early for the Bainbridge Island Ferry. Final destination: the Hoh rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. We loved standing in the wind at the front of the ferry as it motored across the water. Walking around on deck we spotted a seal playing in the waves and from the back of the ferry we could see Mount Rainier hiding in hazy cloud cover behind the stark skyline of Seattle.

After we disembarked from the ferry we began our journey towards the rainforest. Hoh rainforest sits amidst the Olympic National Forest. We drove from the coast of Bainbridge Island into the dense forest. Within minutes we were completely surrounded by pine trees, my cell phone had lost it’s signal and we were alone on the road. We drove for hours through pine tree forests that had been dramatically logged and re-forested. We saw plots of trees that were only a few feet above the ground next to acres with towering trees that may have been next on the loggers list. The strange politics of home construction, Xerox machines, and stationary stores seemed to converge here in this quiet, ravaged and out of the way place.

Along the way we stopped in Sequim pronounced "S'kwim" to visit a family owned Lavender farm and Duck Pond. Throughout Sequim small farmers cultivate lavender plants and although we missed the mid-July Lavender Festival we were lucky enough to pick up a few bags of Lavendar cake mix and to see the Nelsons’ beautiful fields and gardens. It was a great break from the hypnotizing lines of pine trees and the never-ending search for a great radio station.

Finally we drove into the protected Hoh Rainforest. The forest gets between 12-14 feet of rain each year and the temperature stays mild. It is home to some of the last undisturbed Sitka spruce trees and western hemlocks in the US and the trees tower overhead some 300 feet tall and 23 feet across. The oldest trees are more than 500 years old. These moss covered, untouched trees, so large you could lay across their stumps, put the fate of the rest of our forests in sharp relief. We will never live to see other pines as large as long as our collective hunger for lumber continues. The pines of the Olympic peninsula that are unprotected are assigned to life spans that are decades long rather than centuries.

We wandered through the trails and marveled at the height of the trees and the weird beauty of the forests but reluctantly climbed back into our car for the drive back to Bainbridge Island. We struggled to stay awake on the long pine-lined road back towards the urban world. The trip ended with us eating terrible pizza on the windy ferry deck where we wiped our mouths with paper napkins and clutched our cardboard pizza box. The plight of the majestic trees wasn’t quite enough for us to ignore our growling stomachs and the forest was silenced by our end of the day hunger.