LaPush, Part I

Catalyzed by the mild disappointment of a sailing trip postponement, an excursion to La Push resulted in a life-altering bestowment

“Njord’s Favor” garnered no one’s favor by refusing to let her sails deploy. Our months-

long awaited weekend sailing trip across Puget Sound to Poulsbo forcibly postponed,

my partner Danny and I find ourselves landlocked with a late July heatwave (in a non-

AC equipped, very window-y apartment) a mere dozen hours away. I get an immediate

apparition of the two of us hunched under ice water-soaked bed sheets, breathing into

box fans, making only the most subtle of movements for the occasional spritzing of

refrigerator water into each others’ melted faces. While the challenge of turning a home

sauna into an igloo did sound like a legitimate challenge, we quickly determine that only

the real, rugged, outside version of a living room sea fort will do. A backpacking trip to

the cooling mists of the Olympic Peninsula coastline is in imminent order. And we felt

the pull to La Push. 

This beloved yet remote tourist destination among PNW locals resides on the traditional

territory of the Quileute people who settled here thousands of years ago.  It is a site so

beloved, that as a life-long Puget Sounder I was anxious to relieve my sense of

demoralization for never having been. From the spruce, fir, and cedar filled coastline,

lucky folks can spot grey whales and orcas breaching in the distance. And as I was

soon to learn, revelations of the spirit are prone to rising from the depths there as well. 

The Kingston ferry chugs us across the sound to Port Angeles, where we disembark

toward the ranger station to handle all requisite permitting.  We slip through the tiny yet

mighty town of Forks, onward toward the plush Olympic National Park, specifically Third

Beach, the most remote of the three beaches LaPush offers. As we round the the jaw-

dropping perimeter of Lake Crescent, all remnants of Forks’ cozily nostalgic Twilight

souvenir shops and photo-ops have now given way to the hushed magnetization of the

Pacific Ocean. The exterior temperature drops 20 degrees as gray mist engulfs our

Explorer and the tree tops looming stories above are rubbed out by a giant sky-sized

eraser. Ethereal vampires sparkling like diamonds swoop and dive among the thick

woods, to my Hollywood induced horror. Clearly 60 minutes without cell service has

already done wonders for my imagination.

Upon arriving at the parking area we lumber out of our vehicle, stretch our stiffened

muscles and tug on tight the packs that contain our weekend’s shelter and provisions.

Descending through the decadent woods we tromp along, chatting away in excitement

for the treat for which I am in store.  We trot the 1.5 mile footpath through a fertile rain

forest of sword fern, lush salal and second-growth hemlocks, many with tunneling roots

feeding nurse stumps hosting a plethora of earthly delights. The sun-specks dotting our

trail gradually converge as increasing sunlight avails itself through thinning trees.  Until,

alas, the bluff reveals itself, with nothing but the feral grip of the vast sea staring at us.

The last 100 yards of the trail drops steeply, emerging at a knotted barricade of

interwoven drift logs that challenge our mettle. We scramble over fallen trees and shore-

washed boulders, then stroll awestruck along the shore to find a suitable campsite. 

There are some views so formidable they are daunting to look at.  The views at La Push

are like that. The richness seems to overload the comparably miniscule sense orifices. 

The monolithic bluffs on the northwestern tip of the continental US stand as sentinels,

matched in colossal nature only by the leviathan ocean washing up ferociously yet

tenderly to its shore, as if bowing over and over again in reverence.  Whether you are

spiritual or not, there is an undeniable element of the deeply sacred to this place.  A

fierce godliness to be witnessed and honored, similar in feel to me to that of a laboring

mother-to-be.

Danny and I establish our campsite just as the final copper sliver of sunglow slips

behind the horizon. Once the velvety blackness fully immerses us, I pad out to the water

and watch the moody ocean fold and churn unto itself, marveling at the rhythmic moon

glow cast in the lacy white foam across the dampened beach. I welcome the sense of

visceral surrender as the measured swells breach and engulf me–some a mere tug to

the ankles, the next a hug around my knees, some a frigid burst to the hips. But the next

swell that overtakes me isn’t one that stuns my body, it’s one that floors my spirit. A

realization so palpable that it must be honored in prose, and to serve as the foremost

entry of this portal of my soul.