slippery

the Olympic peninsula has become a semi-famous place lately. who would've thought that a small out-of-the-way logging town with a name like a piece of cutlery would get so much attention because of some vampire love story? but seriously, it has.

but that's not why we went to the Olympic peninsula this weekend. we went because my dad is a beach-combing nut. and we didn't make it to Forks. we camped just north of Queets in a little nook of rainforest called Kalaloch. don't they have just cool names for places in this part of the world?

we spent hours and hours walking along beaches. endless beaches covered with what all the little informative plaques call the bones of the rainforest: massive bleached tree trunks piled and twisted and tangled into a death trap of soggy, slippery wood. I almost died three times.
okay, I didn't quite almost die, but there was a lot of falling down. the drift logs can be dangerous, when the tide is high and crashing. but even when it's peaceful and sunny and the shoreline is yards and yards off, there are always the dramatic signs nailed to the trees announcing that 'Drift Logs Kill!!' so you better watch out.

Friday, when we'd finished setting up camp and eating a very late dinner, we walked down to the edge of the continent and watched the waves come out of the darkness with that low and endless growl of theirs. in the shadows, it was deeply frightening. that rushing and pounding of so much water--so much water that it could twirl the whole rainforest into splinters without so much as a thought. the sound of it more than the dampness of it was chilling. and all the large black shapes in the distance, looking so much like bears or whales or monsters... even though I knew they were just dead trees, I found myself watching them as we approached, waiting nervously for them to move. but they never did.

the next day we spent six hours hiking south along the coast, stopping to throw pebbles into the surf or to dig old rope out of the driftwood and rocks. we found a lot of rope.
and in the daytime, with the rare sun burning through all the mist and fog, the ocean isn't scary at all. it's quite playful, really, rippling up and down against the beach, tossing foam into little blobs, and spouting water up into the air as if life is all a game.

we all came home with just the slightest trace of sunburn. having been, in February, to a place where it rains more than three hundred days out of the year, that's kind of funny.