Pacific coastal rainforest is lush and full of activity, even in January. It’s also been a mild winter by the start of 2025. Snoqualmie, the river moon valley, ropes through ancient glacial lake bottom in echos of evergreen forest, now twigs and matchsticks more often than old growth. Still, a wide, deep river sister follows a signature ice groove along a managed forest with minimal setbacks bordering erratic boulders and cement rebar bridges, which I drive on this vantage, overlooking salmon dreams, whispering needles, scaled harmony. Poetic bliss, if the fish were here, historic numbers are a song on the wind. Oral history told by important kin to the fish nation, and I wish them well in their defending. Water, life giver, purity and quantity, though still deeply rooted in a cycle, became a hostile combatant to man made disruptions. Snoquamie Falls is the natural dam of this fork of flowing water that floods human endeavor and becomes a monster. It’s only our own projections, along with construction of our own egocentric ambitions to monetize the natural cycles of crucial complexity we prefer to destroy. A destructive lineage tracing back to those mammoths people are talking about resurrecting. But I love to digress- or transition?
There is this place, where water brings abrupt frocking, these transition zones are all part of wonder in nature, scaling upward, a few thousand feet from mere home ground 4-600′. An alpine lake reflect that hint of robin’s egg blue, and bird song echoing the winter quiet into melodic texture of branching twig cracking under the tire turning my box of metal ride up a final steep climb and into that white track of temperature trigger of physical form. Ice at the root of such garb, on a molecular level. Not like the lake, which rippled invitingly, etching the elevation in charcoal, navy oceans of deep stone trappings. There’s actually a quarry, right at the final turn around the climb and gaining a last look at the tranquil, the truck, pup, and I raddled along the very stone taken from the abrupt change, yet another transition, quick, and then gone around the switch back, and the next bend into daylight’s shining embrace.
Roads stretch flat, a pure white water, yet also still and sharp, like my mother’s linen, the folds of time, layers of second and third dusting, There is not enough to ski, slick, in full sun, soft to the step, but shallow; scraping of an oil based product I’m also heavily wrapped in as a final shell of protection from cold habitat, crisp in step and hiking upward in a steady climb across clearcut, with recent replanting- our “plant a tree” farewell songs of loss for commercial gain, and home grown, local; part of the effort to fold in recycling and our waste systems… but I digress, I guess, again, as one wheel in the universe of life- I can’t start musing on what is without what for. Therefor, Boldly choosing to move forward and literally climb into the first peaks, it was a delight to park, let the dog out for some good snow time, and let my body fall into rhythms of ancient tellings, smells you only get outside- even if they are tainted with traffic exhaust and the smell of oil cooking, sloppy grease traps, or the sour sick whiff of freshly spread manure from industrial agriculture, not to mention build up of us, the settlers. Less than aware ancestors cut old growth hillsides over one-hundred years ago, then another generation got the second growth with the understanding of a last good harvest. In my lifetime, by third growth, commercial development of the valley below into the cities at mouths, deltas, or filled in wetland from here to the sea, inland waterway often clogged with meth shellfish, motor traffic, diesel, hydraulic oil, ballast putridity, and the last orcas evolving to tolerate the conditions we the people have rendered uninhabitable, all the transitions are still part of the the same living network of collective survival, technology cannot bring us closer to said resources without destroying them, and our very beating hearts.
Every important piece of ecological functioning uninhibited, deepens purity of the sources; from the water sheds, to an even more crucial system of long term filtration. The ground is not being poked here for intentional deep well disposal of industrial shit. Our needed comforts, like my synthetic sports wear, still produce these unwanted waste chemicals, and even the wash water from my laundry, and in many homes, the petroleum based detergents, will end up in our water. The heavy metals in all our systems, even personal digestive tracks of the many billions carry these toxins, gaining them at first conception, through genetic marks they leave on us, our biorhythms, leading to cancer, or signaling our lives as having gone too far into comfort as a magical remedy to the realities of life? How am I coping? Maybe I light up a joint, take a drive into the mountains to move and observe, reflect and grow into place with purpose, driving into the edges of wilderness, pushing out a few deer, squirrels, snow shoe hare, and countless other beings already fully immersed in themselves and their place where wildness is required for long term survival. I did leave the truck a couple of miles back, hopefully it remains dependable as a ride home.
The survival rate varies form species to species, but our race, the human populous at large, would not last long out here alone, but together, with enough others, you can transition beyond mere castles in the sky longing, and into community building. Building is what got us here, or so I’m told by the western centric narrative of “U-S-A” chanting idiocracy we just voted in a second time. What a transition that will be. Look! The rabbit’s made the sign of the cross- nature is protected! I recall Magic The Gathering, in which, I’d cast the card Circle of Protection White, and the next four years would be shut out, returning me to reality after the tornado, house dropped on the witch’s sister, and a yellow brick road we’re all still following towards The Emerald City. Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain and keep clicking the red slippers repeating, “There’s no place like home.” This was not what I was thinking as I climbed at the time, but something triggers in the back of my mind at the thought that these lands that I walk are stolen, by our own negligence and people. We’ve taken the bait, hook, line. and sinker. Now, past the tipping point, while walking in fast melting snow, the waters that would have to keep our wells wet and the animals, all of us, alive through hotter and hotter summers. This is something I now think of with each drive up. But look at that view, and the bought access and freedom to some here, so American.
The clear cut gives us this lovely view looking back down the draw I’ve been ascending, a reasonable road hike to about 1200′ of elevation gain at a modest slope and a couple of stream crossings- over bridges. This is the private commercial timber products operation, which literally built (and still does) the civilization enveloped in a beautiful transition of cloud, water in a most haunting, yet crucial part of temperate rainforest ecology. Beyond the inversion, jetting peaks of The Olympics rise into a well named National Park of excellent wilderness, and beyond, the Pacific coast. Layers of so much nature you might be lured into the false sense of abundance in natural resources and the basics for survival, but it’s not enough to sustain this population, and that’s another thought tucked away in the brain, which sets off alarm bells, but the temperate rainforest is where I want to be for the best chance at survival if the comforts were lost through unpredictable happenings of this earth.
I reflect on L.A. right now, and what mental health workers are calling immediate steps in transition, encouraging victims of fire to plan in small graspable moves, get food, water, shelter, the usual survival drill. I do not mean to say this tragedy is simple or usual, though it is man made. Development greed and continued denial of human overstep wherever and whenever we want. As I watched and listened to the governor of Cali proudly say he would wipe ecological restrictions out of rebuilding requirements, I could see the lineup of future fire destruction in these overpopulated places and grieve. When temperate forests dry out in prolonged drought, fires will happen for us too. Rain is good, waters must run deep to keep us safe from fire’s consumption. Before I share with you the magical tail of temperate, I’ll anchor my wander in the picture of this aspect, under the veil, and you can see the developed world at work.
It is a city in the clouds, and a micro-macro in computer technology, the birth of such spells and casting now ruling our consumer, social, and soon to be political personalities far off, as though in a distant land. It’s like that here, what a privilege, in a private acreage, admiring the spectacle, and being one at the same time. Wait, what? Let me draw your attention to the patchwork quilt in the rolling hills and valley below. That’s where the farm is, and where I sleep. There are still some standing groves of second and third growth, maybe some that might be left for a few generations before falling into manipulative speculation or castration of wildness for all. I’ve cut trees, asked and paid others to do so on the landscape I sometimes curate with my own ideas of stewardship transition, of wandering as a right, possession of pace and space, wherever my feet are planted.
Brave little wetland setbacks that have been granted, in more recent tending of this land, a common thread in developing, to build, taking is the order of business. Order, tight squares in neat harvesting, these hills could be rice fields, no, we have not cut our jungle usefulness as a resource that can be swiped, bundled, and chopped into board feet. Left face of this rise out of the Snoqualmie Valley and Rattle Snake Ridge beyond, where there are timber investments from LMNO alfa-beta medatronic meta-gaming. Metagaming mother nature, for those of you more hip techno-files out there AIing the you know what out of finite, as I type, or hike, loosing steam, but looking back at the time and space passing, appreciating where and what I can be doing to transition. How about casting a spell?
Spellbinding, movement, frozen, liquid, bubbling chatter under thin ice. Here, the freeze is only skin deep. Snow is blanketing the open space, but where the stands of uncut forest remain, there is open ground, and a wall of sun catch for the south facing hillsides. Still, erosion pulls at the road cuts, scabs put down to give people, like me, easier access to the first peaks left behind ice flows a mile deep in memories compressed into stones, layers of boulders and pebbles give way to allochthon signatures, vaulted granite base with volcanic wedded basalt linger. Not quite spires, but no less towering in formation, the scent of alpine spruce has overtaken cedar and fir domain with the stiff bristled hardy stands at the edge of the commercial boundaries, beyond, more transitions of mountain scree, frozen alpine waters that, in high summer, offer beauty of turquoise depth. Seasonal transitions aside, on this day, a return to my evergreen chariot and drive through grey daylight, home in time to check stock and bundle self into hearth before the frost comes down in it’s own quiet spell into night. The pale rose hinting at setting, pearl globe bouncing off the edges of uplift, calling the evening chorus of those birds who will wait out the night in thick needle beds, perched under down and comfort in the light breeze that sings her balanced little heart to sleep before dark sets a web of mist from mountain clefts to farm’s edge.
Grounded environment, yet change apparent, ever encroaching on the peace of mind, yet the beauty is still there, she painted her subtle hints in breath and sky, along the cold parts of skin where no cover let the light in, along tailored edges, where this transfer of power, from self to source, ashes that will one day plant another tree in the forest of our enchanted societal normalities, whose plot am I gleaning from in the classic sunset image, tire tracks and all. Clear cuts offer space for a mind melded to technology, even without bitcoin. Smart phone, computer whore, and a gasoline consumer wearing her own death suit in water proof apparel. Transition out of these wet cloths.
EEC Forest Stewardship 