Does this forest look familiar? It should +Twilight fans this is the rainforest near the real (and mythical) town of Forks, Washington +Twilight Fans, and it does feel as otherworldly in person as it does in the movies.
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The dominant species in the Hoh Rainforest are Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla); some grow to tremendous size, reaching 95 meters (312 feet) in height and 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter. Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), western redcedar (Thuja plicata), bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), red alder (Ainus rubra), vine maple (Acer circinatum), and black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) are also found throughout the forest.
The forest has a magical feel to it. I kept expecting a vampire to come out of the brush and bite me in the neck. It looks exactly like what you would expect in any vampire TV show or movie. . .kind of misty, kind of spooky, and really otherworldly.
Typically the forest receives between 140 and 170 inches of rain (3,500-4,300 mm) per year (that is 12-14 feet or over 4 meters of rainfall) and it rarely freezes allowing for incredible growth considering its latitude of about 47°50' N. or about the same latitude as northernmost Maine (Caribou, Maine is further south at 46°50') for comparison.
Many native fauna make the Hoh Rainforest home, including the Pacific tree frog (Pseudacris regilla), northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), bobcat (Lynx rufus), cougar (Felis concolor cougar), raccoon (Procyon lotor), Olympic black bear (Ursus americanus altifrontalis), Roosevelt elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti), and black-tailed deer (Odocoileus columbianus).
The area is also home to the banana slug (Ariolimax columbianus), which has recently been threatened by the encroachment of a new species of slug, the black slug (Arion ater), an invasive species from Northern Europe.
Wandering the Hoh in perfect quiet and with no cell signal I kept hearing that great old tune in my head, "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues." Why? One, it was written and performed by Washington State native Danny O'Keefe. Two, we were still reeling from the second stolen election in our short adult lives wherein the FBI had decided to install a puppet as president that they could control. That "President-elect" is a climate change denier and surely uninterested in wild places like these that desperately need our protection. So, the song is appropriate. Progressives moving to the West Coast deciding the rest of the country is a waste of time. . . growing up in a world with little hope. . .etcetera.
"Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues"
Everybody's goin' away
Said they're movin' to LA
There's not a soul I know around
Everybody's leavin' town
Some caught a freight, some caught a plane
Find the sunshine, leave the rain
They said this town's a waste of time
I guess they're right, it's wastin' mine
Some gotta win, some gotta lose
Good time Charlie's got the blues
Good time Charlie's got the blues
Ya know my heart keeps tellin' me
"You're not a kid at thirty-three"
"Ya play around, ya lose your wife"
"Ya play too long, you lose your life"
I got my pills to ease the pain
Can't find a thing to ease the rain
I'd love to try and settle down
But everybody's leavin' town
Some gotta win, some gotta lose
Good time Charlie's got the blues
Good time Charlie's got the blues
Good time Charlie's got the blues
[whistling to end]
Listen to the original recording below:
Listen to the original recording below:
More about
Danny O'Keefe
In 1968 O'Keefe was a member of a four-man heavy psychedelic rock band named Calliope. The group recorded one album, "Steamed", for Buddah Records before disbanding.
O'Keefe is best known for his only hit single "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues", which was released in September 1972, and reached number 9 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and for "The Road", covered by Jackson Browne on Running on Empty. "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" stayed on the Billboard chart for 14 weeks and sold a million copies. The gramophone record's sales culminated in a gold disc issued by the R.I.A.A.in June 1973.
"Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" was first recorded by O'Keefe in 1967, but not released. It was recorded by The Bards and released in 1968 as the b-side to the song "Tunesmith" on Parrot Records. The Bards were a band from Moses Lake, Washington. The song was recorded by O'Keefe for his self-titled debut album in 1971. The following year he re-recorded it (with a slower, more downbeat arrangement) for his second album, O'Keefe. The second version was issued as a single, reaching #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, #5 on the adult contemporary chart, and #63 on the country chart. The song was also covered by Mel Tormé, especially for a 1986 episode of NBC's Night Court entitled "Leon, We Hardly Knew Ye".
Throughout the winter season, rain falls frequently in the Hon Rainforest, contributing to the massive yearly total of 140 to 170 inches (or 12 to 14 feet) of precipitation each year.
The result of the massive amounts of rain and a temperate climate are a lush, green canopy of both coniferous and deciduous species. Mosses and ferns blanket the surfaces of the trees adding another dimension to the enchantment of the rainforest.
The Hoh Rainforest is located in the stretch of the Pacific coast from southeastern Alaska to the central coast of California. The Hoh is one of the finest remaining examples of temperate rainforest in the United States. It is a popular destination but be warned that there is no easy way to get there. From Port Angeles it takes a couple hours to negotiate the peninsula around to the Hoh. On recent days a bridge has been out on Hwy 101 making the journey even longer. On a typical day it would take a little over an hour to drive from Port Angeles to Forks, Washington. . .and then another hour or so to get into the rainforest.
The Hoh River that traverses the Rainforest is about 56 miles (90 km) long, originating at Hoh Glacier on Mount Olympus. It flows through the Olympic Mountains of Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest emptying into the Pacific Ocean at the Hoh Indian Reservation.
The indigenous people of the Hoh River are known as the Hoh but they call themselves chalat'. Their name for the Hoh River is chalak'ac'it.
On the north side of the mouth of the Hoh River, across from the Hoh Indian Reservation, the town of Oil City was established in 1911 by Frank Johnson and the Olympic Oil Company. Natives had discovered the oil, which seeps to the surface. This was proposed to be a deep water oil port. Many of the lots in the town were bought on the hopes of oil prosperity, but some were used for vacation homes. Oil drilling operations were conducted by the Milwaukee Oil Co., the Washington Oil Co., the Jefferson Oil Co. and others in the surrounding area. No significant commercial oil reserves were found. Later, two-thirds of the platted Oil City was returned to the state which now forms part of the Olympic Wilderness Park.
Interestingly, when the Olympic National Park was created in 1938 it was not to protect these magnificent forests, but its primary objective was to protect herds of Roosevelt elk. Today about 400 of the park's 4,000-5,000 elk live in the Hoh River Valley.
What does the name "Hoh" mean?
According to the Hoh Tribe page, the Hoh River takes its name from the Quinault language name for the river, "Hoxw." No meaning can be associated with the Quinault name. Some have claimed that Hoh means “fast, white water” but, in fact, no etymology for the name can be found in either the Quinault or Quileute languages. The Quileute language is also the language of the Hoh Tribe. Hoh is only a name. If there was an original meaning it has been lost. The Hoh River people themselves, who speak Quileute, call their river Cha’lak’at’sit, which means the “southern river.” We can divide the name up into its roots: -k’at’sit means ‘river,’ cha’la- means ‘(on) the south.’ Thus, just as the Calawah was called Kalo’wa (‘the one in the middle’), the Hoh River was viewed as the most southerly of the rivers in Quileute speaking country.
My Secret Garden
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Drought Continues to Grip Southern California
While late summer and autumn rains offered some relief to Northern California, drought continues to torment the southern part of the state. New data from the U.S. Drought Monitor show exceptional drought in California’s Central Valley, Central Coast, and South Coast.
The map above depicts drought conditions as of November 8, 2016. Areas facing exceptional drought (the highest on the scale) are shown in maroon and extreme drought is red. According to the Drought Monitor classification system, exceptional drought can bring widespread crop and pasture losses, as well as water emergencies due to low reservoirs, streams, and wells. The map is based on measurements of soil, water, and climate conditions collected by federal, state, and local observers.
While the extent and severity of drought has fluctuated over the months and years, the large zone of exceptional drought in Southern California has persisted since January 2014. The chart below shows how extreme the current drought has been in comparison to past dry spells. While the state has experienced several dry periods since 2000, none pushed any portion of the state into exceptional drought. About 20 percent of California remains in exceptional drought now.
In Southern California, the effects have been far reaching. Some farmers have had to switch to crops that require less water. So much groundwater has been pumped from underground aquifers (to make up for the lack of surface water) that the land in the Central Valley has been sinking at an unusually rapid rate. Some towns and cities have put strict conservation measures in place to minimize water use.
Remarkably low water levels in many reservoirs in Southern California are another indicator of the severity of the drought. For instance, the volume of water in Lake Cachuma (below)—which supplies Santa Barbara with drinking water—has fallen to about 7 percent of capacity.
Drought and Fire Consume the Southeast United States
Wildfires in the southeastern United States are usually small and do not produce much smoke compared to the big blazes in the western United States, Canada, or Russia. But a cluster of fires in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky in November 2016 defied that trend.
On November 7, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite observed thick plumes of smoke streaming from forests in the southern Appalachians. Extreme drought fueled the outbreak of fires, and strong winds spread smoke broadly across the Southeast.
The ongoing—and in some areas record-breaking—drought began in May 2016 and intensified throughout the summer. By November, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor showed exceptional drought—the highest level on the scale—across parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. All of the American Southeast, except for coastal areas, faced at least moderate drought.
The map above shows areas that have faced intense evaporative stress between October 6 and November 6, 2016, as represented by the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI). The ESI is not a measure of precipitation; rather, this dataset is based on observations of land surface temperatures (collected by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s geostationary satellites) and on observations of leaf area index from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. The combination makes it possible to gauge evapotranspiration—how much water is evaporating from the land surface and from the leaves of plants. Measuring evapotranspiration is useful because unusually low evapotranspiration is an early indicator that plants are facing stress—even if the leaves have not wilted or turned brown yet.
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Ever wonder what people are doing in the restroom on those long flights?
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