Category Archives: trees

Washington – The Rain Forest

nature, travel, trees, water, writing, , ,
 

The rain forest surprised me. It wasn’t chilly, even though it was cool; perhaps the humidity served as a blanket. The towering complexity wasn’t too overwhelming, because my camera helped me to isolate and literally focus on various particulars.

My favorite plants were the exotic fungi, because they stood out from the multitude of mostly green colors.

They say there are several thousand plant species in there, and I imagined it would be a trial to take a day hike through all that jumble and jungle of green sameness. Instead, it was strangely invigorating. Is there more oxygen than average in a rain forest, what with all those plants exhaling? It was as exciting as the beach.

We had the slightest drizzle as we entered, but not enough to warrant covering my head. Even that amount of moisture waned and my hair didn’t get wet — only pleasantly fluffy, a welcome relief from the usual flat.

Autumn was beginning to give some color accents, especially in the form of the big leaf maples that arch throughout the canopy and drop their leaves over everything.

Hoh….the very name of this forest is like a mother’s calming hush, or a version of the meditative Ohm. I got to thinking of the shape of the letters themselves as the circumference of a Sitka Spruce trunk with branches on the sides.

It seems that the word Hoh by itself has endless possibilities, but in any case it seems to be the only name possible for this place, so quiet and deep. The Hoh River runs through it.

Wherever a stump stands, several plants will use it for a seedbed, so that a conifer, a fern and a deciduous tree will often make a bouquet on the stump. But a log lying horizontal becomes a pasture of low and thick lichens and moss.

Below: Gray leaf lichens were in abundance, lying around everywhere, and also growing on trees. If there were a contest for the brightest fungi, the yellow one would get my vote.

This area of the world boasts the tallest (Sitka) spruce tree and the tallest (Red) cedar tree in the world. I couldn’t guess what most of the evergreens were, their lowest branches were so high up, and everything blanketed with spongy green lace. But I think this one is a Douglas-fir (it’s written like that because it’s not a true fir.)

 Leafy lichens abound. I guess this is one?

I was surprised when Mr. Glad said we should turn around and go back out. We’d been hiking two hours and it didn’t seem to have been more than about 40 minutes. By that time I wasn’t living in the moment, though. Time was flying because I had caught a whiff of the moist rain forest scents. Funny I didn’t notice right away. But when I did, I couldn’t just enjoy the mystery and deliciousness of these smells, but I had to start thinking about how I would describe them, if only to myself, so I could remember them.

I will probably never come back here! was my thought, and I will never smell this again. So why did I waste time thinking about it, I now wonder. Why not just drink of the thrilling sensory Now? And why were the disciples not content to just be in Christ’s presence at His transfiguration?

They were trying to make provision for the future, and prolong the experience, as I was hoping to provide myself with some words to take with me. I couldn’t hope to make the moment last, as we were walking fairly briskly by then, getting closer and closer to the outside where the opportunity would be gone.  I was lagging behind and noticing that the mix of wild aromas changed with the changing terrain, but they were always bewitching. Do people get addicted to smells? It could happen here.

Time was running out, and it did run out, ten days ago now. I kept thinking about the words for several days, but as expected, there was no way to improve on whatever poor metaphors I came up with while my senses were being bombarded.

The smell of the rain forest was something like eating a cookie fresh from the oven, a cookie made of fermented wild mushrooms and hazelnuts, with one’s head in a bucket of vanilla ice cream.

This was a new smell for me, with no links to my grandmother or anything in my past. There was no way to focus on it the way a camera helps one to focus visually — and no way to deliberately preserve it, though my mind has no doubt filed this input in a purer form than the silly image I worked so hard to invent. Perhaps elements of that exotic forest atmosphere exist elsewhere, and if so, they might someday come to me on a moist breeze and I’ll be taken back to the Hoh.

 

Washington – Water and Other Themes

nature, travel, trees, water, , ,

My dear husband conceived the idea of going to the state of Washington for a week, to visit the Olympic Peninsula as he had done with his parents as a boy, and also to see some friends and family who had moved there since our last visit. I’m always a bit overwhelmed by the water, water everywhere aspect of that area, and not because of the water itself.

It’s just that the many canals, sounds and straits around Seattle and northward to the Canadian border make me even more likely than is my usual disorientable self to lose track of where we are. I have studied the maps more than most people are accustomed to doing in this day of GPS and cell phones, but I still feel pretty hopeless about it. We are always looking across some body of water or other, and I never know what it is or what I am seeing on the other side.

It’s beautiful, all that water, and so refreshing, as long as I don’t let myself get discouraged when Mr. Glad wants me to know that those are the San Juan Islands, or that is the Hood Canal. But being overwhelmed by water might be a good thing, if one isn’t drowning.

I kept thinking of my church’s teaching that water is the substance representative of all Creation, so that when Christ was baptized in the Jordan he was actually baptizing the Creation and blessing it. In Bremerton the Harborside Fountain Park highlights the city’s maritime and shipbuilding history with a multitude of fountains, surrounded by constant views of waves, and boats sailing across…um, which canal is that?

Spray from fountains was blessing me, and the waves and moist air were full of the kindness of Him Who alone is holy and blessed in Himself. I can’t intellectually comprehend what my Father has done any more than I can find my way around Puget Sound, but I can receive the blessing anyway.

The forest is imposing wherever the water is not. Lush conifers for Christmas trees, tall, tall Douglas firs and spruces for telephone poles and lumber, lots of lumber for all our houses. This western part of the state is known for high and frequent precipitation to keep all these trees happy, though when the sun doesn’t shine for days, some humans get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) apparently for lack of sunlight, especially in winter when the days are also shorter.

Amazingly, we didn’t have to worry about that, because aside from some morning fog and clouds, and the slightest drizzle, the weather was favoring our touring of the area and taking pictures. I never pulled my rain jacket out of its pouch, even in the rain forest!

Spending days in this part of the country brought to my mind images from a National Geographic children’s book, Three Little Indians, which we read many, many times to our children in the 70’s and 80’s. One of the children featured in the stories of three Native American tribes was Center-of-the-Sky, a Nootka of past eras of the Northwest. The dark skies and high surf of the paintings, along with the idea of fish as a staple of the diet, came back to me on our trip, when two of our hosts served us salmon, which might be the quintessential food of the Northwest.

Years ago when I read a story of Lewis & Clark to the children I was saddened to hear that when the party of mostly Midwesterners got to the Pacific Ocean, hungry and weary, they found a plenitude of fish, but didn’t like it. [I later learned that this is not true.] They had to trade with the Indians for some kind of meat they were more accustomed to. I suppose they were o.k. with berries, those dear little fruits that abound here. Our cousin Anne told us that in her neighborhood in Shelton the women will go berry-picking together to make the time pass more quickly as they tediously fill their buckets with tiny huckleberries or blueberries for pies or the jam pot.

We enjoyed berry cobbler and berry crisp cooked by our hosts, and I took pictures of snow berries, but they are such a bright white they sabotage the photos. We encountered what was probably the Pacific Blackberry: “This is the only native blackberry in the Pacific Northwest, has excellent flavor, and is the ultimate source of several horticultural varieties, including marionberries, loganberries, and boysenberries.”

Mushrooms are prolific in Washington’s woodlands; they get nutrients from the tree roots. October is a good time for harvesting the ones called chanterelles, and one humble café where we ate was featuring wild chanterelles deep-fried. I didn’t want to miss the chance to try these exotic fungi, so we ordered a plate of appetizers. After downing the lot, we doubted that was the best way to present their subtle flavor.

Abundance would be the overarching theme here, where God has blessed so richly in nature and the natural products that we all depend on so much. Our friend C. asked how we liked their state, and I had to think a while before I said, “I’m afraid there are too many trees for me.”

Too many trees!? How could one find fault with that? Western Washington seems to be almost the opposite of the desert, the symbol of want and dryness. But creatures are provided for even in that arid place, and I might still prefer it, with its abundance of sky and sun shining out of it. For the remainder of our vacation, though, I found plenty in this wet and wild land to nourish my soul as well as body.

Comforted

California, church, nature, time, trees, wildflowers,

This afternoon I “had to” run an errand to my stomping grounds of yesteryear. It turned out to be a surprise gift, to drive home on the narrow roads winding through foothills where the sweetness of oak trees filled the warm air. Dark grapes were hanging close to the ground in the vineyards, soaking up the last of the sweetening rays. And wild fennel way higher than my head lined the roadsides.

All these scents and more combined over the half hour’s drive in ever-changing proportions to create a soul’s real comfort food. I had only recently been grieving the loss of a nice garden, breadmaking, my wits, and several other things I couldn’t even put my finger on. Today it was as if God through the instrument of Summer put His arms around me and said, “It’s o.k., Honey, the best parts of your Life That is Past remain, and will be here for you in the future.” And Summer was telling me that she is going to sit a spell yet and likely give me a few more hugs.

An Olive Tree is More Than Interesting

art, church, history, nature, Pascha, travel, trees

In a recent post I said that my birthday olive tree was “an interesting gift.” I suppose it was because I was dead tired that I couldn’t think of a more telling word. I’m embarrassed to use such an uninteresting word as interesting. Ugh. The truth is, to receive the gift of an olive tree on the occasion of getting older made a huge impression on me. If I hadn’t needed to finish that post quickly and make dinner…well, enough of the excuses.

I love to look at these trees, so as I was browsing them on the Internet I pasted some pictures here. Vincent Van Gogh painted several scenes of olives.

A post about olive trees was one of the first in my string of blogs. And recently on my tree-rich trip I saw old California orchards. My childhood was near the groves that made Lindsay Ripe Olives famous, though as I have mentioned, I don’t like the fruits, and my family never had an olive tree on our property. Olive oil gelato? Very West-Coast, and I would be willing to give that a try.

You can adopt an olive tree growing in Italy, like the one at top, and then receive its produce for a year. I suppose you have to adopt it, or a different one, again the next year. Not very good parenting.

Montenegro is the home of this pocked giant, which is reputed to be 2000 years old. The longevity intrigues me, along with all the Biblical references, which I haven’t even begun to think about. Mention of them often goes along with general descriptions of abundance and productivity of gardens, and with pomegranates and figs and vineyards.

There’s a story of the olive tree who was asked to be king, and the olive branch in the dove’s mouth after The Flood. Doors for the Temple were carved in olive wood. Many people make reference to it being the tree of Peace, and God knows I need that–I need Him.

What does it mean, “I am like a green olive plant in the house of my God.” ?  It means alive, if it is green. Let me flourish in Your House, O Lord. Let me live in You.

Getting back to the trees themselves, the grove I would most like to visit is this idyllic one in Turkey , the fifth-largest seller of olive oil in the world– but trying to get to second place. Olive oil I do much appreciate, and can imagine having a picnic on the warm yellow grass, of bread dipped in oil, sitting on a blanket under the sun. Once during my sojourns in that very country, I helped women in shalvar* gather olives from the ground where they’d fallen. I even sampled one of the wrinkly brined olives they cured in flat pans spread around under the trees, and had to restrain myself from immediately spitting it out.

*(I tried in vain to find a picture of these baggy pants that so many women still wore in Turkey in the 60’s and 70’s. These days a version has become high fashion, and the ones worn by chic models are not the ones I saw and wore. Perhaps this will be be the subject of a future post.)


The Garden of Gethsemane figures prominently in the events of our salvation history, into which we entered last week through the services and events leading up to Pascha. And this tree lives there. What if it is also 2,000 years old?

I planned to post this blog before Pascha, but now here we are post-Gethsemane, post-Golgotha. Wherever olive trees, any trees, are living, this week they are dancing.