SILVER SPRINGS
Greetings! Fall has found us in the wake of a busy summer—our travels took us to northwestern Michigan, Iowa, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia and a slew of campgrounds in coastal and central Washington. August, especially seemed like one, long expedition; the few days between camping trips spent prepping for the next.
One of our favorite haunts this year was at the edge of Mt. Rainier National Park – a park called Silver Springs Campground. We documented a recent stay with our iPhones, capturing sights, sounds and textures which we then assembled into our first (ta-daa!) “Tactile Travelogue”. It’s not quite Smell-O-Vision but in that same sensory spirit—we invite you to accompany us on a virtual walk through one of our favorite spots in the Pacific Northwest. We hope you enjoy!
We went crunching in. Over a footbridge, up through sleeves of sumptuous moss where the branches were strung with whisper-thin dreamcatchers studded with prey…
A legion of jays, royal blue and tufted, screamed through the canopy and surveyed us with blunt, nailhead eyes. We crossed a second bridge over rapids that shot from a bubbling spring and tumbled down a staircase of logs. Hand-carved signs reminded us that when the salmon come home, it is here that they slide stealthily under century-old roots to rest and forage caddis and mayflies; to spawn and to wait and—to die.
We walked on, heels paddling corpulent mushrooms, salmon berries and ferns. Over a third bridge, our campsite appeared—a wide expanse beneath hundred-foot cedars and firs; the floor littered with needles and cones and emerald sheets of moss strewn like the shorn locks of giants. Beyond and through a gap in the trees—where we had hung our trusty, red hammock—flowed the icy, White River, as swift and determined as time. We waded in past our shins until the fine, black sand enveloped our feet, urging us forward and deeper and further downstream…