“Aye,
he’s really something!” whispers the wiry
Scotsman crouched behind his telephoto lens. “The
park is beautiful, but this bear is an unexpected bonus.
It’s really made my day.”
The
visitor’s smile says it all. What good fortune
to chance upon a wild black bear this close to Hurricane
Ridge Visitor Center. Summer sightings are quite common,
but you can’t count on seeing bears. Today we
are in luck. We sit quietly and watch the show.
It’s
a beautiful high-country summer’s noon. The crystalline
air in these nearly 6,000-foot subalpine meadows is
buzzing and alive. Bumblebees weave drunkenly from buttercup
to buttercup, reminding me of nothing so much as stripe-jerseyed
rugby players on a lazy summertime pub crawl in the
English countryside. Mosquitoes and flies home in on
hiker’s sweat like B-52 bombers on a wartime air
raid. An unseen Olympic marmot, one of 16 animals endemic
to the Olympic Peninsula, whistles an alarm to its colony
from a nearby rock, just as a barrel-chested Columbia
black-tailed doe and her fawn pass by...
The
Hood Canal Twana (Skokomish), north-shore Klallam, and
coastal Queets, Hoh, Makah, Quinault, and Quileute tribes
have called the peninsula home for millenia, making
full use of abundant salmon; whales, seals, and land-based
game; roots and berries; and red cedar and other forest
products. Under the watchful gaze of a natural pantheon
that included all-powerful Raven and Thunderbird, the
tribes alternately warred and traded with one another
from Columbia River to Alaska, using ceremonial potlatch
celebrations to maintain the power balance...
—From
“A Timeless Refuge” by Nicky Leach
A
Timeless Refuge
Nicky Leach
32 pages with 30 color images. 9”x9”
ISBN 0-939365-67-7
$5.95 
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