Sunset, Cape Alava,
Olympic National Park, Washington

This photograph of the sunset colors over Cape Alava in Olympic National Park was made while on a clam digging excursion one weekend. I was a forester for the Makah Indian tribe on the Olympic Peninsula, and a couple of friends and I, who were into clam digging and such, decided to visit the coast portion of Olympic National Park.

I would hate for you to be overly disillusioned, but I should tell you that this unit of the Park is both wonderful -- on the wild Pacific coast, with very limited access -- and at the same time hemmed in by massive corporate industrial tree farms immediately inland. Such was the compromise reached during the creation of the Park. You save what you can and give up what you must, at any certain point in time.

On this trip, we drove the highways, then the county roads, then the logging roads to the trailhead to the Park unit. A short hike brought us to the Pacific shore, where we were to camp.

We dug our favorites, the small, roundish, hard-shelled 'steamer' clams, so named because of their preparation by steaming them open in a pot of water. To be able to harvest them from such a wild and relatively unpolluted stretch of wilderness beach was a treat. We kept the clams in buckets of sea water, so that they could 'spit' the sand out before being cooked the next day. Only a greenhorn would cook and eat clams straight from the beach.

We were the only people there, too. The solitude was great.

Come night, we were each in our sleeping bags under the stars, for the weather was clear and so there was no need for tents. We were on a bluff high above the beach. Still, as the tide came in and the waves crashed ever higher, I was wakened several times by the noise. In my state of half consciousness, I found myself afraid that we had misjudged; that we had camped too close to the tide and its surf. Then I would realize our safety and drift back to sleep.

The repeated wakenings may have deprived me of a night of total deep sleep, but the sound of the surf in the black night in such a special place will remain with me forever.

Sunsets and Sunrises Photo Gallery Menu