Tag Archives: Olympic National Park

Deer Park to Maiden Peak along the Grand Ridge Trail: A Birthday Dayhike

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Two old friends head out on a blustery day hike in Washington’s Olympic National Park to celebrate  the younger one turning half a century old in late August of 2023

* NOTE: This foto-essay has 61 fotos & 8 short videos. Enjoy! *

Views out across Olympic National Park from the Grand Ridge Trail, Tuesday 29 August 2023.

Edan Z & William B on the “Happy Birthday Trail.” We had planned to celebrate Edan’s birthday together out in nature. Edan chose the hike, and I provided the car & gas. 

Yuppers, we’re only 50 & 64 years in age. Hey, do you like my bonnet? LOL! It’s a sun hat to help me prevent a recurrence of skin cancer.

Rugged old mountains shredding clouds in the wind.

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Maddy & Diddy

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– a short snap of a tale –

She sighed as her iPhone buzzed hard enough on her desk to spin sideways. Maddy glanced at the time and just knew who texted her. Should’ve turned off all notifications, she grumbled. Diddy, her ex-husband, had texted her yet again. They’ve been divorced nearly 20 years now, remain friendly acquaintances even tho they live in different states and have two children between them. But why in hell did she ever married anyone named Diddy? What a stupid, fucking name! Of course, Diddy wasn’t his real name. Austin Willis Wallace was.

His mama used to play Bo Diddley records back when he was a little boy, however, and little Austin Willis would boogey around the house so much his daddy called him, “Diddy.” Name stuck. “Lookit Diddy go!” folks used to say. And when he grew up and married Maddy, he impregnated her. Two twin boys resulted, Dilbert and Data, named after two characters, one a cartoon and the other an android. Maddy rolled her eyes remembering her crazy youth and sighed with annoyed exasperation as her smartfone vibrated across her desk again. That goddamn Diddy!

Maddy worked as a nurse in neuro-oncology and had hoped to retire already, but having kids late in life plus the economic and financial upheavals of the pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine made it imperative to keep chugging away RNing on people’s brains. She was busy, tired, had to help Dilbert pay the initial installment on his reactivated student loans, and just wanted to go home and soak in the bathtub and play with her waterproof vibrator.

OK, what the hell, Maddy decided. She reached out and picked up her iPhone. Yes, sure enough, a text had popped in from Diddy. That goddamn Diddy! What did her ex-hubby have to say this time? She clicked on the message. Continue reading →

Back to the Olympics! Wacky Family Fun in the Great Outdoors, 2008

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A blended family returns to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas again and yet again in the Year 2008

*This is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway, woo HOO!*

Kate & Talia playing in the stinky seaweed. Makes Morgan retch, so she hangs back outa site. Friday 8 August 2008.

The Olympic Peninsula is almost a separate state from the rest of Washington. Kinda like West Virginia is to my native Virginia. It’s small, compact, remote, and rugged. Unlike West Virginia, however, it’s bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Salish Sea on the other two. Kristina, born in Seattle, grew up out there. Her dad, a dentist, a loner, and a survivor of US internment camps for Japanese-Americans, took her on numerous fishing trips deep into the river canyons of the Olympics and out into the straits even in stormy weather. We can see the peaks of Olympic National Park and the surrounding national forest wilderness areas from across the water in Seattle. I am always in awe of the everchanging views, even those of rain and clouds, whenever I gaze across the Salish Sea toward yon Olympic Mountains.

The ONP is also where Gwen & I came together as a couple back in the Summer of 1986. The wild combination of mountains, forests, glaciers, whitewater, meadows, and seashore made the ONP my favorite national park to explore. The proximity of the Olympics to Seattle is a primary reason Gwen & I raised our kids out here in Washington State as well as why Kristina & I continue to return there. At the same time, however, the Olympics are so close to Seattle yet so far away. Transportation times are long with the combination of big-city streets, ferry ships, and congested, winding, two-lane roads. Didn’t matter. For years we returned there time and again to nurture our blended families.

This little essay is my recreation of journeys and experiences in which many of the things often used to jog our memories and anchor ourselves across the fabric of timespace were destroyed in a 2010 catastrophic house fire. So many fotos were lost. So many journal entries and kids’ drawings were burned up or blotted out by smoke and water damage. If you see more pictures of some people more than others, well, the ones you see were those salvaged from the watersoaked ashes of the fire, not any judgment or demonstration of preference. The remains of recollection hereby present themselves. Enjoy anyway, and may we all learn even more from the many lessons experienced from living the lives we choose to live.  

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From Nights of Darkness to Days of Burning Light: Family Adventures in Olympic National Park 2011

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*Note this is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

Saturday 27 August – Thursday 1 September 2011

Kate & Talia running along the edge of the Hoh River in Olympic National Park, Sunday evening of the 28th of August 2011.

Recollections and dynamics of a strange and beautiful Family Camping Trip to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas, including the Elwha & Hoh River Valleys including the Hoh Rain Forest, back & forth thru the village of Sekiu, out to Lake Ozette & the Ozette Triangle with Cape Alava on the Wild Olympic Coast, & finally, the Upper Sol Duc. At the time our family was recovering from a series of personal catastrophes and severe financial losses related to the Great Global Recession and a house fire. We felt great disruption and distress as a household. As I look back after nearly 8 years, it’s clear to me now all of us in our own way unconsciously used this grand adventure to reset our blended family. Families are, after all, constant works in progress, and being outdoors in nature was the primary way our family found to heal our relationships.

We looked for light in a dark time. I speak for myself, of course, but share what I sensed in those who lived with me back in those days and nights. Perhaps I am wrong, and being wrong is acceptable. Such is life. As I experienced those years of Hard Times, we searched for anything to give us hope. Ironically, however, we weren’t the type of people to usually waste time “hoping” for something to happen. We took action steps. So for us to hope back in those times was a measure of our collective despair.

Life is messy from birth to death. Struggling to choose freely regardless of our circumstances, we sought to focus on beauty and joy and to let go of dread. This road trip into a spectacular and diverse national park was not a distraction for our family but a trip of purpose to reclaim our fractured identity as a family. We sought to heal amidst nature. There was a drive to redefine what and who we were as individuals, as a family, and as part of a larger network of communities. We sought to anchor ourselves in a national park we all had been to many times in the same way people venture forth to those special sacred places on pilgrimages as physical as they are spiritual. I was, unfortunately, particularly prone towards melancholy and rumination back then as I did not understand depression as disease. These group and individual deliberations were not necessarily conscious intentions at the time but arose from the understandings of hindsight.

Perhaps we forgot the journey itself was as vital if not more so than the destinations, although deep down I sense we all knew somehow the destinations were internal and buried so deep as to feel unreachable. Indeed this road trip of sorts into the Wild was a build-up to an intense Native American Church house blessing ceremony for our then-temporary home. This was the one we had moved into following the losses of our previous homes including one to a devastating fire only to have the “new” house damaged by a natural gas explosion in the house next door. Led by an NAC group inspired by the Rainbow Hoop Prophecy. These events both past and planned loomed over this family adventure into Olympic National Park. At times I felt haunted, lost in what could have been, and at other times I felt joy in the present moment and felt by coming together with others for such a significant ceremony we were in action to accomplish results.

My then-now-ex-third wife Kristina, the mother of my stepdaughter Talia, grew up just outside of it in Port Angeles where she spent much of her youth exploring the national park and surrounding areas with her parents. Her father took her fishing up every stream in the peninsula it seemed. The ONP is also where my then-girlfriend and eventual second-ex-wife Gwen spent the Summer of 1986 back after we began to date earlier in the spring. She worked at Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort during those magickal months. This incredibly varied national park is where the two of us grew into a couple. Gwen showed me the Pacific Ocean for the first time during a camping trip to Second Beach on the Wild Olympic Coast. Years later we had children, first Morgan (now goes by Dylan) and then Kate. We kept returning anyway, Gwen, Kristina, & I, in various combinations with each other, our children, and our friends.

Yes, all six of us experienced many trips to the ONP with our children and sometimes other friends. Camping and hiking trips into the Olympics were a regular odyssey for all 3 of my daughters. Kristina and I wanted to create a sense of continuity and normalcy for the kids, but our different approaches began to clash more and more as we struggled to emerge from the strain of mounting crises. 

As such this 2011 adventure proved to be especially bittersweet in hindsight as it was the last journey to the Olympics for this particular Bass (Katayama-Bass) Family. We had many adventures on this one crazy fun trip anyway. All of us felt blessed to have shared these great road trips together as a family with so many wonderful memories of camping, hiking, swimming, roasting marshmallows, and, yes, even arguing. So…Enjoy!

Family tree hug around a giant Sitka spruce! L2R: Kristina, Morgan, Kate, Talia, & me, William. Foto by an enthusiastic stranger with my Nikon D90. Monday 29 August 2011.

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Ghosts in the Forests: Family Adventures in Olympic National Park 2004 & 2005

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Memories from Family Adventures in the Mountain Forests

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

Long ago memories: Talia before a downed tree in Sol Duc Campground, Olympic National Park. Kate is on the distant left. The boy on foto right is one of their new “campground buddies.” Summer of 2005. Foto by Morgan Bass.

Our blended family enjoyed many adventures into the wilds of Washington State. We spent more time in Olympic National Park than in any other national park or wilderness area. Memories of these trips, while wonderful, flitter like ghosts in a sad happy kind of way. Most of this is due to the disruption caused by the March 2010 housefire in particular. We lost about 90% or more of our print fotos, slide transparencies, and digital pictures from the time before the Fire. We had many hundreds, almost 2,000 pictures from family trips to the Olympics after the Fire such as from the Summers of 2010 and 2011. Only a small few images remain from some of our adventures before then. In some cases, however, nothing survived the Fire.

These losses led to a blurry fragmentation of memories as we all struggle to recall what happened when. These pictures, for example, stem from two family camping trips to the Olympics, including both Salt Creek Park – Clallam County Recreation Area and the national park as well as visits to other local gems in the area. One set of fotos is from our August 2004 trip there and the other from 2005, possibly August as well, altho the those pictures stamped February 2006. They clearly were taken in the summertime thus placing them back in 2005. These digital images have been copied and shared several times. Often the time dates reflect the time copies of the now-lost original images was shared, saved, recopied, reshared, and saved again. My family’s story here is as much about our relationships to our memories of places, times, and people as well as the road trips and camping adventures we found ourselves upon. Sometimes all this feels as if we’re chasing ghosts thru the forests.  Continue reading →

Midwinter atop Hurricane Ridge

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One cold, sunny day in Olympic National Park in January 2016

*This is an unfinished work in progress. In the meantime please enjoy what’s here. Thank you!*

Click upon any foto to enlarge the image.

Gazing across mountain wilderness from Hurricane Ridge (5,242 ft / 1,598 m), Olympic National Park. Sunday 24 January 2016. All fotos by the Author.

The Mt. Olympus Massif, heart of the Olympic Mountains. This crown jewel of the maritime Pacific Northwest stands at the elevation of 7,969 feet or 2,429 meters.

After visiting a troubled and isolated friend afflicted with both a chronic autoimmune condition and agoraphobia outside of Sequim, Washington, I drove alone towards Port Angeles. In addition to catching up on life together and cheering her up, I interviewed her about what she believes to be extraterrestrial or intradimensional beings and creatures creeping around her house when she was lived with her parents and siblings many years ago. She declared those series of events felt as if they occurred just yesterday. When it came time for me to leave and return to Seattle, I invited her to join me on a Sunday drive up to Hurricane Ridge. My friend declined. She felt fragile and all those people and wide, open alpine spaces filled her with a dread she couldn’t explain other than as a highly sensitive person she felt unusually vulnerable. So I drove alone, feeling a little sad, and began to reminisce about my own trips into Olympic National Park with my ex-wives Gwen and Kristina and our children Morgan, Kate, and Talia. Oh, how I miss them! And yet I grew to appreciate my time alone with only myself and the world. Up the icy mountain road I drove deep into my own Dreamtime.

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Deep into Mountains Beyond the River

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(***This is a work in progress. All is Copyrighted. Enjoy!***)

William & Morgan’s Father-Daughter 50-mile, 7-day Backpacking Trip in Olympic National Park with Way Too Much Weight,
Sunday 31 August – Saturday 6 September 2014,
or
A father & daughter rediscover each other on the Trail before tripping out on the edge of the Ocean

*Click on each foto to blow it up big if you like. Enjoy!*

White Creek Meadows along the O’Neil’s Pass Trail, Olympic National Park, 3 September 2014, Day 4.

Picture of goofy Dad by Daughter. Enchanted Valley, Day 2.

Picture of Daughter by Dad. Upper Quinault, Day 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morgan was born in the bed at home of an apartment in Seattle a little over 20 years ago before our first backpacking trip together. Both experiences were initiations. I didn’t realize the latter was one, too, however, until a couple of months later. Backpacking with my oldest of three daughters changed my life. It changed hers, too.

This journey was a spiritual and deeply physical reconnection with nature and wilderness. I was also compelled to drop down into deeper levels of awareness of what and who I am as both a self-aware man and as consciousness beyond self. This was my first backpacking trip in 7 years. Suffered from my most severe blisters ever, and I’m the kinda of guy who rarely gets blisters and when I do they’re little bitty thangs.

This trip was also Morgan’s longest backpacking trip up to this point. She was concerned about old injuries flaring up. This trek was a big test for her for she planned to attempt a thruhike of the Appalachian Trial in 6 more months. Most precious, however, was a Father and his Daughter re-creating their parent-child relationship as adults. Being halfway up a steep mountainside with a river below you miles and miles from civilization does things like that to people in a hurry to do-do-do.

Afterwards we both admitted we were afraid we wouldn’t get along, would argue constantly, and wouldn’t find anything to talk about or for. We laughed as those fears didn’t even come close to materializing. Plus this proved an incredible adventure in its own right. Wild weather, bizarre people, magnificent scenery marred by global climate disruption, and unexpected surprises including stumbling into a psychedelic festival on the edge of the ocean made this end of summer backpacking trip unforgettable.

An invisible dynamic was the complex relationships we had with her mom and step-mom, both whom were also my ex-wives. Gwen Hughes, Morgan’s mother, and I thruhiked the Appalachian Trail all the way from Georgia to Maine back in 1991. Gwen and I were known as The Pregnant Rhinos back in our halcyon thruhiker days.

We did an estimated 3,500 kilometers or almost 2,200 miles plus about 150 to 200 miles of crazy ass side hikes. The length of the AT keeps changing. It’s 2,190 miles per 2016 but was 2,168.1 miles in 2001, 2,179.1 miles in 2010, and was about 2,000 miles in 1937. It was 2,184 miles when Gwen and I thruhiked the AT in 1991, and 2,189.2 miles when Morgan attempted her thruhike the following year in 2015.

The Pregnant Rhinos on the AT! aka Morgan’s parents before she was born. 🙂 Here Crazy Gweeyin buzzes off Yeldud the Mad’s hair while he pretends to be scary. This is during a crazy stop at Rusty’s Hard Time Hollow on the edge of the Shenandoahs in Virginia sometime in early Summer of 1991. At the time of this picture, William is 32 years along & Gwen is 26. Foto by Weathercarrot.

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