I’ve visited a lot of parts of this country -- the East Coast, the Midwest, the South, the Plains States -- where I have heard folks make pretty much the same joke about their local weather: “Hell, if you don’t like it, just wait five minutes.”
Here in the mountainous Pacific Northwest, we might offer a slightly different wisecrack: “If you don’t like the weather, just go up a ways.”
The elevation of the small harbor town where I live on Puget Sound is only 69 feet above sea level, but my neighbors and I can look west, crane our necks up a bit toward the Olympic Mountains, and see a range of peaks that reach nearly eight thousand feet into the sky. Or we can turn southeast and take in the view of Mt. Rainier, a massive volcano 14, 411 feet in elevation and the highest summit in the Cascades.
As a photographer, I can report that all this up-and-down topography is appealing to the eye, though the differences in altitude make for climatic conditions that are boggling to the mind. Consider the photographs I’m posting today, for example. They are from my two most recent, winter-season hiking outings, and yet the look and feel of the scenes is so very different. The above image is a reflecting pond in a forest near sea level, where, even in winter, the air temperature was in the mid-40’s and the plants growing in the pond were as happy as little green clams. Below is a picture of ice on a decidedly chilly creek in the Olympic Mountains, elevation about 4500 feet. The temperature was 14-degrees.
Like other areas of the country, the five-minute-rule applies here in Washington too, and a clear, sunny day can turn stormy and foul in no time. I have explored amazing places, low and high, for 35 years now. Each unpredictable trail has taken me, not to Lake-This, or Mount-That, but rather to a place of humility.
The more I experience, the less I “know.”
