2024 was a year of change for us here in the forests on the Olympic Peninsula, both in our personal lives, building a cabin and moving Carolita’s mom here, and in the growing movement to preserve our legacy forests on WA state land. We truly found our community and tribe, between our amazing neighbors and our wonderful forest friends. Forest people are the best people!
We celebrated saving the majestic “Shore Thing” forest, but mourned the loss of the amazing “On the Line” and “Ode to Joyce” forests. We were part of a huge grass-roots effort that helped elect Dave Upthegrove as the new Commissioner of Public Lands of Washington state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where he has promised to halt the logging of legacy forests. At several fundraisers for Dave’s campaign, I gave photo presentations on our fight to save these forests in Clallam County and in the Elwha River watershed. Our Elwha Legacy Forests coalition has continued to grow with the amazing support of our community and neighbors!
Carolita and I went on some epic hikes – doing a long fall day hike to Royal Lake in the Royal Basin, to discovering the joys of mushroom hunting in the Sol Duc valley, to seeing the fall colors in the Hoh Rainforest.
Here’s my Top 10 favorite photos I took this year, in chronological order:
Waterfalls are still one of my favorite things to photograph! This is the bottom of a multi-tier waterfall in the Hoh temperate rainforest (Olympic National Park), taken in the spring. It’s almost tropical looking with the sword ferns and lush green moss.
Lake Crescent, part of Olympic National Park, has so many hidden and well-known treasures. The Devil’s Punchbowl is one of the most popular. To photograph the footbridge in the middle of summer and have it all to myself, I had to get up early and hike to it over several days, waiting for a calm morning with blue skies.
The amazing and iconic amanita muscaria mushroom. This year, we started foraging for edible mushrooms (though not this one!), including oyster, chanterelles, chicken of the woods, and lobster mushrooms. It was also a banner year for fungus, with unusual August rains leading to an explosion of mushrooms in September and October!
Beautiful fall colors at Royal Lake in the Royal Basin, Olympic National Park. Carolita and I pushed ourselves to reach Royal Lake on a day hike in the fall, where you start in a lush lowland forest along the Dungeness River and end up in an alpine valley, surrounded by tall mountain peaks. Reaching the lake around 3:30 PM, we did the long hike out in the dark.
I had a lot of fun this fall photographing such a wonderful variety of mushrooms! This is a macro photo of a small group of mushrooms in the Hoh River Valley in Olympic National Park.
Carolita surrounded by the fall beauty of the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. We finally got to visit close to peak fall colors and they made the amazing and lush temperate rainforest even more magical! The moss-covered big leaf maples had lost much of their leaves, but the vine maple was just starting to turn to golden and red colors.
We found this beautiful fall scene on the banks of Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park. A large big leaf maple branch with golden, fall colored leaves and hanging usnea lichen stretches out over the lake, while raindrops disturb the surface of the lake and forested hillsides surround it.
We’re so fortunate to live close to the amazing Elwha River, which is still recovering after two dams were removed 10 years ago, finally freeing it. I love the contrast between the deep blue river, the evergreen fir trees and the golden fall colors in October.
For the next one, it’s actually a complimentary pair of moving images from our work with Elwha Legacy Forests.
Nina and Carolita hug and console each other while standing on a new logging road in the beautiful “On the Line” forest. It was a complex, biodiverse and naturally regenerated legacy forest, containing large diameter trees, standing snags and large dead wood on the forest floor. It was a critical resource for our climate crisis and loss of biodiversity, before it was clear-cut logged.
Nina bears witness to the destruction taking place in the ‘Ode to Joyce‘ forest. On a rainy day, a small group of us hiked to the edge of ‘Ode to Joyce’ Unit 2, where they had cut down over 10 acres of mature trees and left them all laid down, in what used to be a lush legacy forest. It takes an emotional toll to witness the decimation of an entire ecosystem, but photographing it is the best way I know of to make others aware of what is happening.
Sunrise at Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, at the end of November. As the sun rises, low clouds and fog from the Lake Sutherland valley flow west into Lake Crescent.
Happy New Year from Carolita & I!
