The front desk woman at the hotel saw my hair this morning and had a look on her face that said everything without saying anything. I did not get directions from her. I got back in the car.
I had planned to drive back up to Hurricane Ridge at first light to catch the sun painting the mountain peaks. No clouds meant no drama meant no particular reason to set an alarm, which is the internal conversation that leads to sleeping in. What I got instead was the light show happening right outside the window — the morning sun hitting the tops of the trees at the edge of the golf course, turning everything that particular gold that only lasts about fifteen minutes and then disappears. Laziest photos I’ll probably take all year. Shot from the hotel room. I stand by all of them.
Then deer on the golf course, because of course. Five of them in the field at first light, which is when deer are out and I knew that, which is why I had a feeling about taking the road by the course before coffee. The camera settings weren’t right. The shots were mediocre. The deer were unaware of any of this.
Sol Duc Falls
The falls were unplanned. That’s how the best stops usually work. Less than a mile from the parking lot, the trail through old growth forest, mosquitoes in numbers that deserve their own separate mention, and then the falls opening up at the end of the path. No ducks at Sol Duc Falls, for the record. I looked.
I wore steel-toed hiking boots I’d bought because they were comfortable and I liked how they looked. Not required for this trail. I saw people doing it in flip-flops. I do not recommend that, but I also understand the impulse.
The Hoh Rainforest
I want to read you something from the sign, because it does the job better than I can: the Hoh Rainforest receives an average of 140 inches of rain annually. Sitka spruce and Western hemlock reaching 300 feet, draped in mosses and ferns, the canopy filtering the light into something that lands closer to green glow than sunlight. One of the largest temperate rainforests in the world, sitting on the Olympic Peninsula, and I was walking through it alone.
Mostly alone. There was a sign at the trailhead that said a cougar had been active in this area and advised against hiking solo. I noted this, continued hiking solo, and moved with more purpose than usual. Nothing happened. The rainforest was quiet and extraordinary.
Rialto Beach, 1 a.m.
I haven’t gotten to the best part yet.
Somewhere on the drive back I started seeing aurora posts on social media. A geomagnetic storm, people said. Strong enough to be visible from the Pacific Northwest. I drove to Rialto Beach and got there after dark, set up the tripod, and spent three hours on a pitch-black beach talking to strangers while the sky did things I didn’t have words for.
You need a camera to capture the color — the eye doesn’t quite register it the same way. But you don’t need a camera to feel it. There were people from everywhere out there, all of them pointing in the same direction, all of them generous with their screens and their angles and their enthusiasm for what was happening. Someone got a silhouette of me at the tripod. I was doing time lapses, brackets, everything I had.
It was one of the most powerful displays of light I’ve ever witnessed. And light is literally my profession.
There’s something about an aurora that brings people together in a way I don’t know how to explain other than to say I felt it on the beach that night. Complete strangers in the dark, all looking at the same sky. That doesn’t happen very often.
Day two of fifty states. Washington was not messing around.
