"There was a time when our people
covered the whole land as the waves of a wind-ruffled
sea cover its shell-paved floor."
-Chief Sealth, 1854
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I paid my first visit to the Olympic Peninsula before I could walk. It was among my family's favorite places to visit, and every summer found us picnicking on Lake Crescent, or hiking the Hoh River Valley, ocean beaches, or high up on Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Range. The mountains have been described alternately as "goddesses, full-breasted, broad-hipped", (Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I, 1945), "like the jaws of a trap", (Jonathan Evison, West of Here, 2011), and "as though nature had designed [them] to shut up this spot for her safe retreat
forever." (Eugene Semple, Governor of Washington Territory, The Seattle Press, 1888.) I recall an avalanche of wonderment upon each encounter with the mountains and rain forests as a child; I still wonder over them as an adult. In The Northwest Coast, Richard L. Williams captures the many reasons for wonderment - if not the wonder itself - beautifully.
A native Washingtonian himself, Williams writes about the Peninsula from the perspective of one who's experienced it, respects it, and appreciates it. Through a series of essays illustrated with full-color photos by eminent Northwest photographers, he casts a wide net, covering the coast from Vancouver Island's Nootka Sound (site of an Indian ambush on the crew of the Boston), to the Kalmiopsis, a 100-square-mile wilderness area on the Oregon-California border. Set aside in 1946 primarily for the protection of a small species of rhododendron (its namesake), the Kalmiopsis has got a lot more going for it than just that:
When Williams writes about the Northwest, it's with an eye for geological time. He sees more to natural wonders than their apparent beauty. He sees the big picture - the geological and meteorological forces of creation - that make the Northwest coast unique. When he looks at the Olympic Mountains he sees how the puzzle pieces fitted together to form them, how those pieces have changed over time, and how they fit today. An endemic flower - the Olympics claim eight - observed high on the slopes isn't just a lucky survivor in Williams' eye, it's the result of tectonic and glacial forces that occurred just the other day in geological time.
Williams possesses a degree of insight only a native old-timer has. While he wasn't party to the Press Expedition which began its assault into the interior of the mountains in December, 1889 - the last great expedition in the lower forty-eight - he did know Edmund S. Meany whom he describes as "a zealous 27-year-old staff member of the [Seattle] Press" who was instrumental in organizing it. Not even the local Indians ventured into the interior, lest they raise the ire of the Thunderbird, a mythical giant believed to reside there. Today, Meany's name graces a performance hall on the University of Washington campus, as well as a peak in the mountains he helped, by way of organizing, to explore.
observed high on the slopes isn't just a lucky survivor in Williams' eye, it's the result of tectonic and glacial forces that occurred just the other day in geological time.
Though not technically a reference book, I've determined to apply the wet scale to Northwest Coast because it's reviewed here alongside two reference volumes. For creating a fascinating read out of a collection of essays (which taken as a whole have some reference value), I give it a perfect score of four drops.
Olympic National Park - Washington accomplishes everything for the national park that The Northwest Coast does. More a pamphlet than a book, it's author is an authority on Olympic National Park, having served as its Chief Park Naturalist. He's thorough in describing glacial, meteorological and geological processes, and does it with all the color of a bureaucrat. With that in mind, don't read Olympic for entertainment; read it for useful information and helpful explanations and it won't disappoint. Covered topics: Glaciation, climate, water cycle, park vegetation, wildlife, fish habitat, and native history among others. There's a section on the Pacific Coast Area (beaches mostly accessible only on foot - which by experience I will attest is a great way to enjoy them). Chock full of photographs, it's a shame they're black and white, but at least they give the reader some idea of the park's natural beauty. Lots of suggested reading with a helpful, concise history of events leading to national park status. I give it three drops.
For a slim volume, 101 Wildflowers of Olympic National Park packs a punch. Its beauty isn't in the line drawings of flowers (although they do look like the flowers they're supposed to represent), nor is it in their myriad descriptions, although these really aren't bad. The beauty of this book lies in its layout. Most flower guides assume the reader has some previous knowledge of botany. 101 Wildflowers does not, so rather than organize the flowers according to their families, they're arranged by color. Want to identify a pink flower growing along a trail? Turn to the "pink section" and locate it by looking at the drawings. Not sure you're looking at the right pink flower? Read the description (most are less than 70 words) and see if it's growing in the kind of area/elevation (zone) described. These "life" or "climate" zones change with elevation and the earth's latitude. For instance, the Arctic-Alpine zone occurs in the Olympics at an elevation of 5500 feet. That same zone occurs 800 miles south in California's Sierra Madres at an elevation of 9000 feet. The authors have included an easy to understand graph to illustrate this. Obviously, there are more than 101 species of flowers in Olympic National Park. 101 Wildflowers lists only the most common. As a result, only one of the eight endemic wildflowers in the Olympic Range made the cut. Also, blossom color fades over time, so that may effect accuracy in identification. For these reasons, I give it three drops. Happy hunting. posted 11/07/16  TOP 
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