Our Little Corner of the Planet

Washington Coastal Clean-up, 4/18/09

Another Earth Day and another beach clean-up. This year a few more of my co-workers joined us at Kalaloch for a fun day of taking care of our little corner of the planet. A couple of years ago Discover Your Northwest teamed up with Olympia National Park and a few other organizations to create the Washington Clean Coast Alliance to rid Washington's beaches of the marine debris that washes ashore every year.

It only takes everyone making small contributions to do our parts to take care of our little corners of the world.

To learn more go to the Alliance's website: http://www.coastsavers.org/index.html

Coastal Forest

Kalaloch Nature Trail, 4/26/08, 2 miles

A good way to get to know a new area, or even an familiar one, is to take a hike n the local nature trail. Of all the years I'd camped at Kalaloch, I had never explored this little loop in the woods.

The coastal forest is in all its glory along the trail, with large trees blocking most of the sky so that the sunlight is filtered through green boughs making the forest floor a kaleidoscope of greens. Moss clings to anything it can. Shrubs fight for space, sunlight and nutrients in the soil - enough of a fight that they will grow anywhere they can get a toe-hold including the trunks of dead and even living trees. Flowers and mushroom spot the ground with often vibrant colors and sometimes muted tones.

A coastal forest is a place of life and in the early spring it is a place to see life blossom exponentially in the moist and nutrient rich world.

Cleaning Up

Earth Day, April 21, 2007

Every year for Earth Day, I head out to the Washington Coast to help clean up the beaches. It's an event organized by lovers of the Washington Coast since 2000. I've taken part in the endeavor for 5 years now. I first went out by myself but gradually friends and family joined me (even a friend from Oklahoma joined us one year) and we've made it our "first" camping trip and good deed of the year. We've found that cleaning up the winter debris is a way for us to get a fresh start on our year.

I was joined this year by Michael & my sister as we once again picked our way through the beaches at Kalaloch in the Olympic National Park. However, there isn't a stretch of waterfront during this weekend that by now doesn't have a cleaning crew scouring over the drift logs and rocks. We spent a drizzly morning picking up rope, plastic, shoes, and bottles - we even found an industrial crab pot to drag off the beach (those things are damn heavy). In the afternoon we joined other volunteers for a BBQ at the campground. By now the drizzle had become more serious and it didn't take us too long to decide that heading home would be much warmer and drier.

You could be asking why it took so long to write this entry. I wanted to wait for the weekend's stats from the organizers. And here they are: 806 registered volunteers pulled 23 tons of debris off the Washington beaches. Among the debris were 14 crab pots and 2 refrigerators as well as tires, nets, buoys and 55 gallon drums. That's a lot of garbage, not easy to haul off the beaches. The volunteers, all of them - even the unregistered ones - deserve a standing ovation for their hard work.

It's a never ending job, cleaning Washington's beaches. Every year storms deposit more trash. Every weekend tourists leave something behind. I will be there next year. Will you join me?

New Year's Eve

1/1/07 Olympic Coast

I can think of no better way to ring in a new year than snuggled in my tent beneath snow-covered mountains or tall stately trees. This year we welcomed 2007 by sleeping on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But first we made a little tour around the north end of the Olympic Peninsula.

We packed up the puppies Saturday and drove to Sequim, hoping to camp at the Dungeness Spit. Sadly, the campground is closed during the winter and we had to figure out our next plan as night was fast approaching. Kudos to the Washington State Park system as we can usually find a campground open - our Saturday night was spent overlooking Sequim Bay. We were beginning to regret our decision as most people crazy enough to camp in the dead of winter are at least intelligent enough to do it in campers, with generators. After 5 days of listening to our neighbor's generator during the last power outage, I was not thrilled about listening to our temporary neighbor's power source. By 10, though, the campground was silent except for the occasional wave lapping up against the rocks. Thank you temporary camping neighbor.

We awoke early the next morning to catch the possible sunrise on Hurricane Ridge. The road to the ridge is closed until dawn, but we were there waiting when the rangers opened the gate and we weere able to watch the sun make it's way across the sky, through the infrequent breaks in the clouds. The wind, blowing harsh and cold convinced us that a few hours on the ridge snowshoeing wouldn't be the best way to spend the morning. So we let the puppies play in the snow a bit and went on our way to Kalaloch.

It rained on and off on our drive out to the beach and sprinkled lightly on us as we set up camp. But dried up a bit as we walked along the beach watching the clam-diggers, many coming up the beach empty-handed. The rain came back as wee settled into our tent, the puppies curled up on our feet. A few of our neighbors whooped it up at midnight, but Michael & I just wished each other a happy new year then nestled back into our sleeping bags.

Happy New Year!