6 1/2 Miles On The Hoh River Trail

The Hoh River trail extends 18 miles from the rain forest valley to the sub alpine meadows at the base of Mt. Olympus. If snowfall on Mt. Olympus could be recorded , it might rank as the highest annual snowfall of all 48 contiguous states. Our journey didn't take us quite that far but it did lead us to Tom's Creek meadows. To get there we walked through rain forest. All the phases of forest growth, from seedlings on nurse logs to splintered, standing crag trunks marked our path. At the places where giant trees had fallen over the path, they had been sawed up and we could pass by the cross-sections of hundreds of years of growth.

The meadow lay to the side of the path and opened up into a field of Licorice Ferns, Monkey Flowers, and short Meadow Parsley. The feeling in that velvety pasture was one of total calm and quiet. At any moment I expected a tiny fairy to creep from under a mushroom and wink. No fairy did of course but the mushrooms she could have chosen from were varied and exquisite.