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Book: The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest by Timothy Egan
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Authors: Timothy Egan
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late spring, with snow on the mountainsides twenty-five feet deep, the expedition neared its destination. Desperate for animal fat after months of living on salmon and pancakes, they killed a bear one spring day, devoured the animal’s liver and drank the meat grease as if it were fresh-squeezed orange juice. At last they reached the Quinault River and were hailed as conquering, but somewhat slow-moving, heroes. It took them six months to travel forty-nine miles. No mountains were climbed. Essentially, it was a valley walk, one which today can be done on national park trails in three days, maybe four if you’re burdened with extra whiskey.
The white-tipped ridge ahead of me is hidden by cloud cover again; the peek-a-boo views through slits in the forest are replaced by puffs of gray and an increase in the tempo of drip, drip, drip. Everything is greener and darker. No light directly overhead. The canopy has hogged it all; the low-level vegetation must compete for the afterlight. Midday, and I can’t shoot a picture in here without boosting the film speed. I’m not sure exactly where I am—somewhere in the valley—but I can still hear the distant river, my tether. Now, I hear a clomping sound, branches breaking underfoot. I look up and see elk, black-chested beasts, about a thousand pounds each. I count six, eight, ten, and then to the other side, six more. A herd of Roosevelt elk. I feel tiny and two-legged. In the salad bar of the rain forest, they are pruning shrubs and chomping brush. Their coat of fur is reddish, except for the black-vested chest. Some have antlers. Their legs, muscled and taut, are long and graceful. I watch them eat, they watch me watch. After a few minutes, somebody gets a bad scent, they crash and clomp up the steep side of the valley and disappear.
President Teddy Roosevelt, alarmed by the dwindling coastal elk herds and the fast-approaching loggers, made much of the Olympic Peninsula a protected National Monument in 1909, shortly before he left office. Hunters were slaughtering the elk to get at their teeth, which were sold as watch fobs to Elks Club members around the country. Nearly thirtyyears later, Teddy’s cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the cripple who could not walk, toured the perimeter of the peninsula by car. Though it drizzled off and on, the President was enchanted. One night at Lake Quinault, timber industrialists and their allies in the Forest Service argued against a park in the Olympics, saying the rain forest should not be protected. Roosevelt got up early the next morning, looked east across the lake to the sun rising over the iced peaks above the thousand-year-old evergreen trees, and made up his mind. The Olympics, he said, “must be a national park.” This at the depths of the Depression. Score one for Winthrop; the poet’s spirit had lingered in the mist of the rain forest.
In ardent defense of the Olympics, Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s Interior Secretary, said, “If the exploiters are permitted to have their way with the Olympic Peninsula, all that will be left will be the outraged squeal of future generations over the loss of another national treasure.” The mountain range and narrow corridors along the lowland western valleys of the rain forest were set aside as a national park in 1938. Nature has since repaid the family: the largest Roosevelt elk herd in the world roams the Olympic Peninsula.
Had Roosevelt gone the other way, and opened the Olympics to deforestation and pell-mell settlement, much of the peninsula might well look like the area around Forks, an abused timber town west of the national park. Surrounded by thick stumps, burned-over land and eroded hillsides, Forks is to the Olympic Peninsula what a butt rash is to Venus. The logging company officials who work out of this town still look at the park covetously; in their braver moods, they speak of getting at the protected timber.
Once, most of the country was covered with trees; now the
The white-tipped ridge ahead of me is hidden by cloud cover again; the peek-a-boo views through slits in the forest are replaced by puffs of gray and an increase in the tempo of drip, drip, drip. Everything is greener and darker. No light directly overhead. The canopy has hogged it all; the low-level vegetation must compete for the afterlight. Midday, and I can’t shoot a picture in here without boosting the film speed. I’m not sure exactly where I am—somewhere in the valley—but I can still hear the distant river, my tether. Now, I hear a clomping sound, branches breaking underfoot. I look up and see elk, black-chested beasts, about a thousand pounds each. I count six, eight, ten, and then to the other side, six more. A herd of Roosevelt elk. I feel tiny and two-legged. In the salad bar of the rain forest, they are pruning shrubs and chomping brush. Their coat of fur is reddish, except for the black-vested chest. Some have antlers. Their legs, muscled and taut, are long and graceful. I watch them eat, they watch me watch. After a few minutes, somebody gets a bad scent, they crash and clomp up the steep side of the valley and disappear.
President Teddy Roosevelt, alarmed by the dwindling coastal elk herds and the fast-approaching loggers, made much of the Olympic Peninsula a protected National Monument in 1909, shortly before he left office. Hunters were slaughtering the elk to get at their teeth, which were sold as watch fobs to Elks Club members around the country. Nearly thirtyyears later, Teddy’s cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the cripple who could not walk, toured the perimeter of the peninsula by car. Though it drizzled off and on, the President was enchanted. One night at Lake Quinault, timber industrialists and their allies in the Forest Service argued against a park in the Olympics, saying the rain forest should not be protected. Roosevelt got up early the next morning, looked east across the lake to the sun rising over the iced peaks above the thousand-year-old evergreen trees, and made up his mind. The Olympics, he said, “must be a national park.” This at the depths of the Depression. Score one for Winthrop; the poet’s spirit had lingered in the mist of the rain forest.
In ardent defense of the Olympics, Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s Interior Secretary, said, “If the exploiters are permitted to have their way with the Olympic Peninsula, all that will be left will be the outraged squeal of future generations over the loss of another national treasure.” The mountain range and narrow corridors along the lowland western valleys of the rain forest were set aside as a national park in 1938. Nature has since repaid the family: the largest Roosevelt elk herd in the world roams the Olympic Peninsula.
Had Roosevelt gone the other way, and opened the Olympics to deforestation and pell-mell settlement, much of the peninsula might well look like the area around Forks, an abused timber town west of the national park. Surrounded by thick stumps, burned-over land and eroded hillsides, Forks is to the Olympic Peninsula what a butt rash is to Venus. The logging company officials who work out of this town still look at the park covetously; in their braver moods, they speak of getting at the protected timber.
Once, most of the country was covered with trees; now the
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