Sunday Escape to the Forest (Part 1)

Winter has finally come to the Northwest. I sit here writing a post about a perfectly sunny day in a beautiful park, and outside the snow is relentless:

View from Street Outside Work

View from Outside My Window at Home

If you didn't read the time signature, I am posting this around 3 PM PST. That means I got out of work early. But it is such a beautiful site.

But on to my other adventures. Last Sunday I visited a regional park called Lucia Falls. It boasted an impressive set of rapids and waterfalls, like the name said. I used it as a good excuse to escape from the suburban confines of Vancouver. It was a nice escape.

The drive around Clark County can be surprising. I always thought of it as this weird mixture of leftover farmland which hasn't been developed into suburban housing yet. I never really comprehended there were the foothills of the Cascades and a National Forest in the county. Upon arriving at the park I found a beautiful moss covered deciduous tree:

The tree looked out of place in the middle of the vast majority of the coniferous evergreens. It also had a little area cleared around it, like it was a relic which withstood the little pasture which would come to be.

The park invited me in, and I found myself reverting back to one of my most common methods of collecting myself: Running away to the woods.

This was a technique I would use often when I was in Barcelona. The beautiful thing about that city is that it had so many parks, small and large, to go run away too (that also didn't require a car to get to.) I had at my fingertips any number of wooded areas with lots of paths and hiking. I was also fortunate enough to have Park Güell basically at my doorstep, so that invited me many times as well.

The access to parks and green space here exists, and it is well represented. But it is not the same type of green space one would find in Barcelona, or in other cities for that matter. Many of the parks in Vancouver are just open fields with a picnic table and some sort of sports court, and nothing more. There are rarely any trails, and rarely are they forested.

For that exact reason I had to use my car to go out and explore.

Well actually, lets back up. Originally I wanted to go grocery shopping, which did end up happening. But the day was so perfect, sunny, bright, and somewhat warm, so I decided to run off. I heard about Lucia Falls Park, so I decided to venture off in search of it. After driving about 30 minutes past the last large town with regular bus service I crossed into another version of Clark County.

Previously all I had seen of the city, and county, included a concave structure of dense urbanization, thinning out to a mixture of empty lots, some farmland, and apartment complexes. Lots of trees compared to what I had driven through to get here (see earlier posts), but not necessarily a forest. Here was an environment similar to my alma mater. There were pastures, forests, rolling hills, complete with beautiful streams and rivers:

Path Through the Forest

The East Fork of the Lewis River

Small Stream Leading to the East Fork

Eroded and Flood Area of the East Fork

Rapids on the East Fork

I really appreciate the fact that Clark County has protected these areas. These falls, and their corresponding rivers, are so important to the ecosystem and salmon population of the area. There were signs all around the park saying to not make contact with the water, less it disturb the salmon or transfer a potentially harmful disease to the habitat.

The falls themselves were also very impressive. It amazes me that rivers here are so huge, and that this is considered a "fork" of the main Lewis River... Which is also massive.

The falls bid me goodbye as the sun began to sink below the mountains around me. But I didn't let that stop my exploring. After seeing the falls, I began to drive farther out, to see the communities of Yacolt and Amboy. See Part 2 for reflections on the few small independent towns that remain in Clark County.