The downhill slope of summer

Jill Severn

Photo by Anna Schlecht

We’re on the downhill slope of summer.

We may still have some hot weather, but the signs of the coming change of season are everywhere: Unwatered grass has turned from green to gold. School supplies are on sale. Vine maples are beginning to turn color.

Most people’s gardens are starting to look frowzy and disheveled, not to mention weedy. Those rascally weeds we thought we’d dispatched in July have snuck back up while we were distracted by the many glories of summer.

One of those glories is the abundance of day trips and more extended getaways that life in the Pacific Northwest invites. This week, while weeds grow in my garden, I’m in beautiful downtown Forks, sitting in front of a faux-rustic cabin. All the cabins in this quirky place have names: Explorers Inn, Olympic Inn, Frontier Inn. Ours is called the Old Growth Inn. We wonder: How did they know we are old growth?

It is, of course, a relative term. Yesterday we spent time in the Creator’s garden: the Hoh Rain Forest. In that garden, the trees less than 200 years old are young, and senior status is reserved for trees over 500. No language has words grand enough to describe their majesty.

Those trees were the topic of conversation in many languages, as people from Germany, Russia, Taiwan, Quebec, and heaven knows where else walked the trails. There were also license plates in the parking lot from states all over the U.S.

It was odd to walk in a rainforest in hot, sunny, sweaty weather, surrounded by so many tourists. The trails were dry and dusty, and the famous Hall of Mosses looked like it was wishing for a shower. We were glad to have come but resolved to return in April, to see just rain in the rainforest.

On the road out, we stopped along the Hoh River and watched a herd of about 20 elk. Moms and some young were cooling of in the middle of the river, standing in water almost up to their bellies. The rest of the herd rested on a sandbar. One young one stood on the edge of the flowing water, hesitating to wade deeper. Slowly, haltingly, he finally made it to the middle a few steps at a time. Then a second, even younger one, emerged from the group on the sandbar, hesitated for only a few seconds at the water line, and trotted right in.

All us mammals have a lot of behaviors and behavior variations in common.

Today we went to Rialto Beach, another indescribably beautiful Olympic Peninsula destination. It’s a mostly gravelly beach with massive stacks of rock – some far enough out to be islands, some heaving up onto the beach, and one – called The Hole in the Wall – high up enough on the beach that, at low tide, people can walk through the giant hole in the even more gigantic rock.

Most of these rock formations are crowned with spruce trees; some also grow grasses and wildflowers.

On our way to the Hole in the Wall, we fell into conversation with a couple from Austria who now live in Silicon Valley. They were traveling with their twenty-something daughter. All three were full of questions, and thoroughly enjoying our home territory, from Seattle to the coast. We had a wonderful time together.

The daughter was on a quest to see a starfish. She got to see lots of them, and a lot of other tide pool dwellers. And at the end of our glorious, sun-filled beach hike, we all hugged before we parted.

This morning, we awoke to crashing thunder, lightning and rain. That’s good news for the mosses. And time to come home.

This trip affirmed two things: First, we live in paradise. People from all over the world envy us.

Second, -- and this was a new thought, though it’s obvious – our gardens are part of this larger paradise.

The stronger our sense of place, the deeper our affection for our home territory becomes. And, of course, the more we love it, the more likely we are to be good stewards of it – starting, literally, in our own back yards.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com