These Times

Along the Quinault River, into Enchanted Valley

Kirk Ericson | Aug 15, 20240

Coutesy of John Hagemann count

The author tries something new: A genuine moss hat.

Mrs. Ericson started using a tincture two weeks ago recommended by an ethnobotanist we know. I don't mean to brag, but it's nice knowing an ethnobotanist, especially one who spent time in the Amazon rainforest. It's like knowing a Buddhist who spent time in Tibet.

This tincture in a vial, designed to improve one's energy and mental functions, contains prickly ash, ginko, gotu kola, rosemary and devil's club. It's a vile-tasting brew - I've tried it for the past few days - and it seems to have given us both a boost.

But this column isn't about that.

Two weekends ago, I went on a two-night, 25.5-mile roundtrip hike along the Quinault River in Olympic National Park. The trail led to Enchanted Valley, a subalpine meadow dwarfed by towering, craggy peaks that present several waterfalls. You can see the waterfalls, but you cannot hear them. They were silent waterfalls. It was a silence as enchanting as the sound of a waterfall up close.

The tall grass in the meadow was plentiful, comfortable and seductive. I laid amid the grass and the sounds of the Quinault River and took a nap in the shade of the Enchanted Valley Chalet, a shuttered building built in 1931.

Enchanted Valley is a valley well-named.

On the way out of the valley on the second day, I petted a broadleaf plant along the trail that was colored in a soft green - and covered in invisible tiny stingers, which instantly registered. The stinging sensation in my hand was acute. It stung like the devil.

"That's devil's club," one of my hiking buddies told me.

Huh.

Just two weeks ago, I was introduced to the existence on this planet of a thing called devil's club. Now here I was, witnessing it in its home deep in this old-growth rainforest - and fully appreciating why it was given such an unholy name.

The spontaneity and methods of how gaps in our knowledge get filled in is a wonderous matter, and I am thankful when I can be conscious of it happening. These dawnings give me pleasure.

I also made the introduction of thimbleberries on this hike – fragile, sweet treats colored in a luxurious red, a red reminiscent of velvet. It also feels a bit like velvet when you rub the berry between your thumb and forefinger.

I learned about orb-weaving spiders. I saw a couple of their webs, which were precisely curved like a fortune-teller's globe. The early morning sun was hitting one of the dew-dotted webs.

I saw the thickest piece of moss I've ever seen, maybe 1 foot deep. I found another pile of moss, growing on the ground, shaped like a rice hat, and put it on my head for a spell. It was remarkably light and kept my head cool. I returned the moss to a new shady place.

We walked through some serene and welcoming glades. Amid the rise and fall of the trail, we occasionally entered flat land, with filtered sun punching through, and an easy trail cushioned by soft forest matting. The glades were spaces where we were free from the insistent up and down grades.

"We're in a glade, boys" became welcome words.

I stood on the north bank of the Quinault River at 3:30 a.m., the morning of a new moon, and saw more stars than space between stars. The stars were as jammed into the sky as Christmas tree lights on that one house in the neighborhood aiming to win the block's Christmas light contest.

When I met the future Mrs. Ericson, she was an active Buddhist, and had been for nearly half her life at that point. While explaining her brand of Buddhism to me, she talked about the steps a human must travel toward enlightenment. To be in a state of constant learning, she told me, was one of the highest rungs of life, above rapture, above even ecstasy.

Regardless of our upbringing, our fiscal and physical well-being, regardless of whether we're on the street or in the woods, we are all able capable of learning from what life presents to us.

When we learn, we become more alive.