*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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