I had a fantastic week of hiking through Olympic National Park, cresting beautiful ridges, strolling through old growth forests and waiting out and racing tides to walk along the beaches and headlands of the Olympic Coast — brining my feet in salt water. I’m here, at the western-most edge of the lower-48, staring out across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean with the sounds of sea lions frolicking. It sure feels good to be done.
This is a bizarre, yet strangely iconic trail. People I’ve met in towns, that are somehow aware of the trail, have asked me how it is, consistently asking if it’s “more wild” than the other long trails I’ve hiked. For whatever reason it has acquired a reputation of being wild. I’ve contemplated this question for many hundreds of miles of hiking. Is the Pacific Northwest Trail wild?
The Pacific Northwest is a true representation of the West in many ways, while simultaneously being a world of difference. The American West was defined by the desire to settle land and hold territory, fueled by the dream of abundant, cheap agriculture and economic prosperity. Farming the West would have been impossible, with few exceptions, without large public works projects to capture water and corral wild rivers to make the desert bloom. Irrigation altered what was once called “wasteland.”
In contrast, the Pacific Northwest is a land of abundance. Water flows freely, berries are endless, and vegetation rapidly subsumes everything. Trails and roads marked on topographic maps are lost within a handful of years to the vegetation. New roads and trails are their own form of life, springing out of nowhere, creating a sense of unintentionality that is equally unknown to mappers. In such a place, scarcity seems foreign and humans seem out of place. Nature, at first inspection, is thriving. Yet at the same time, these spaces have been altered in extraordinary ways by humans at unimaginable scale.
Salmon used to be so prevalent in the rivers that there are anecdotes of crossing the waterways on their backs. Now, all that remains is a trickle. The densest, seemingly most wild parts of the forest appear wild due to the impenetrable undergrowth. Undergrowth that dominates in no small part because the goliath Douglas Firs that used to exist are no more. Entire hillsides have recently been laid bare, yet one may not realize this because of the rapidity of growth for many opportunistic plants. The undergrowth in many areas could be constrained in several decades if the trees were allowed to reclaim their historic dimensions.
The trail meanders across these human-altered landscapes, surviving solely on the industrial infrastructure built in the past century. It travels on forest roads and logging roads, both made to serve logging — one on public land and the other on private. The trail makes frequent use of asphalt highways, infrastructure that was made to more efficiently move the bounty of the region to saw mills, and the dimensional wood products from saw mills to elsewhere.
How can a trail be wild when a full 25% is paved surfaces, and at least another 50% is gravel road? The vegetation is relentless, the road walking even more so. A wary hiker is in danger of being trapped for days when enticed by a warm meal in a nearby town. I have been more glad to find a night’s sanctuary in towns on this trail than anything else I have hiked.
The blackberries vine their way across roadways, erecting their own bridges that span the two sides of hardened, petroleum rivers. Time has converted Jeep roads to single track, which are likely to be lost in another decade.
Towns, the classic foil to an untamed wild, may gradually shift into obscurity. The vegetation and questionable economic outlook are harbingers of change, where all that remains may be frames of rusted vehicles. These too may eventually return to the earth.
The Pacific Northwest has clearly been tamed, but still exudes a wild spirit. A cornucopia of possibility and an illusion of truly inexhaustible resources. So is the Pacific Northwest Trail wild? Well, I’m not sure. More importantly, is the trail spectacular?
Apart from the 3 national parks with glorious views and phenomenal beaches, accessed primarily by single track, you’d be very hard-pressed to say it’s a good hiking trail. But at its core, it is unbelievably American. Even the trail’s iconic logo, the Thunderbird of the native tribes, is presently undergoing litigation for being just one more exploited resource that was taken without proper consultation of the people it belongs to.
The trail came into existence based on a compelling concept, and eventually gained the title of “National Scenic Trail.” Yet the trail still feels like it is defined by the National Parks it travels through, and not by the route it winds. Perhaps, as the trail ages it will indeed become spectacular. It will take hundreds of millions of dollars and many tens of thousands of volunteer hours to reroute the trail, and to procure the neighboring private lands. As single track trail gets cut and worked, and as the routing takes on intentionality, the crude state of road walking may one day be replaced by beautiful, lazy single track. As the trail infrastructure used to traverse the Northwest is tamed, and the industry of the region shifts, the spaces the trail visits may be allowed to rejuvenate, to become special (spectacular even), and to once again become wild.
After 1,200ish miles, I feel like I understand this region so much better than when I started. I’m quite glad to have hiked this trail. It’s been fun, it’s been miserable, it’s been beautiful and breathtaking. At times, it has even had some tremendous hiking. But I would never want to hike the entirety of this thing again.
May your shoes remain dirty and your spirits high,
Jeff