Beware, Logs Can Kill

Perched in the sand along Rialto beach is the sign "Beware, Logs Can Kill." Looking at the small waves licking the sand it hardly seemed a reasonable warning. But from the debree cast high on the shore, it is perhaps a fair one. In the Winter the ocean can become fierce. It is constatnly reaarranging the shore line, throwing enormous drift logs here, some of which stand over ten stories high. Many of the trees which stand back from the shore have had their roots washed by salt water so many times that now they too have become standing drift wood; their white bare arms still reaching for the sun.

The Summer waves are smaller but still their force carries millions of stones to the beach. A blanket of smooth round colors rattle under my feet and dotted the beach for as far as I could see. There are over 57 miles of this primitive coast line here at Olympic Naitonal Park. We walked only two of them to investiagate the sea stacks that spire to the sky like fragments of broken glass. When we reached them we found between their jagged walls dozens of tide-pools, each rippling back and forth with a myriad of sea life. Further down we came to the 'Hole in the Wall'. Through this rock arch we discovered anemones, crabs and hundreds of starfish.