A Good Sign

Day 70: In observation of the Solstice and a rare day of decent weather, I went for a little hike yesterday. Six weeks ago, my plans for a walk on this old road were foiled by a sign reading, "Trail closed for road repair." I said to myself, "Bet that clay bank slipped." As it turned out, I was half right. It hadn't slipped, but it had subsided to such a point that they laid a new gravel road bed over a a stretch roughly 500' long. I was in for another surprise when I reached the bottom: much of the river bank was taped off and marked with signs indicating that revegetation work was in progress. I was pleased to see it, even though it cut me off from my goal by a hundred yards, particularly since the signs had obviously been put up by Washington State Parks. The area is one of very few along the river which is not protected by the Nisqually Land Trust or the tribe, both of which have been engaged in restoring the shoreline for years. Seeing that State Parks has finally joined the effort to protect the river was the perfect topping on the Solstice "cake."

The Way It Was In 1932

Day 349: The photo in yesterday's post was taken from the site of the historic Sunrise Auto Camp, shown here in a two-panel panorama created by my maternal grandfather in 1932. His images were shot from a higher vantage point which I have not been able to identify in the field and shows Mt. Fremont faintly in the background beneath the overlaid blue sky as well as the unmistakable profile of the west end of Sourdough Ridge. I captured Sourdough's horizon from my photo, reduced it in size and pasted it over Gpa's shot at 80% opacity. The parking area shown here is the site of our revegetation efforts. Quite a change!

Sunrise Reveg

Day 348: With National Public Lands Day projects on the horizon, I have been watching the weather forecast with some anxiety for the last two weeks, seeing it progress from a threat of rain to the promise of sunny but chilly conditions at 6400' where our revegetation efforts would be concentrated. Consequently, when I left home yesterday, I was kitted up in my thermal underwear, expecting to be kneeling on frozen ground at least until mid-day. It was brisk where we gathered in White River Campground at 8 AM, 2000' lower, but by the time we had hiked to our staging area near Sunrise, the temperature had risen to a point where it was refreshingly cool and kept us sweat-free as we whellbarrowed flats of wildflower seedlings and "cubies" of water to the site of the 1930s Sunrise Auto Camp.

Meadow restoration is a long-term endeavour, and work has been going on at this location for at least a decade. Several of this year's crew (including me) were returnees. Reveg is compelling because it is a tangible labour. You begin with a bare patch of ground (an old campsite, a social trail) and with each seedling bedded, the trails disappear; the campsites fill in. Taking a step back, you observe a measurable progression of your work. If you were part of a previous year's work party, you may even be rewarded by seeing your prior plantings now releasing the seed of their first season. Every hole you dig and fill with a young plant reinforces your connection to the site, to its history, to the Park, to the Earth.

Before the snow flies, some 50,000 plants will have been put in place...not all today, but over the course of the autumn weeks. People may ask, "But are they really wildflowers if you raised them in a greenhouse?" Of course. The seeds from which they were grown were gathered nearby to maintain the local genome. We're just giving them some help in reestablishing their territory, repairing damage we inflicted.

As for the weather, by mid-day, our jackets had come off and some of us were regretting the added insulation of long johns, although when the sun slipped behind a cloud, a bit of chill returned. When we finally called it a day, I was in a sweat and had planted something between 300-400 Potentillas, asters, Partridgefoot and assorted sedges, a figure equalled by every member of the team. As a final step in ensuring their survival, we watered our charges well, then wheeled our tools and empty seed flats away and, with wistful, backward glances to our handiwork as we hiked over the last roll, consigned our green "children" to the Mountain's keeping.

National Public Lands Day - Revegetation

Day 349: Yesterday, it was my privilege to be part of a revegetation crew working near Sunrise in Mount Rainier National Park. Nowhere on the Mountain is human impact more visible than in the subalpine zone, and particularly here where as late as 1970, a "drive-in" campground was available for visitor use. A gravel road cut through the meadow and hikers were allowed to wander freely through fields of wildflowers, thus creating countless "social trails" where vegetation was trampled and destroyed. The growing season is very short here, and plants did not have time to recover. Eventually, the area was closed to camping and the use of social trails was prohibited, but for the most part, the vegetation did not fill in. Enter revegetation crews, the heroes of the story!

For the last twenty years or more, the Park and several of its partners have been working together to replant these areas. Volunteers have been drawn in from the public sector to help out with this enormous project, and no single event in the Park points that up like National Public Lands Day. Approximately sixty people donned gloves and pushed wheelbarrows full of seedlings to a site above Sunrise Camp (now a walk-in camp), and there picked up trowels and knee-pads and set to work putting some 5000 plants in the ground. The weather was sunny but chilly, as one might expect when working at 6400' in late September, but most of the volunteers were veteran hikers or returnees from previous NPLD events, and knew what to expect.

"Reveg" is perhaps the Park's most popular volunteer project. All ages can participate, and a dozen or more young people were among our group. Some were Scouts. Some had come with their families to plant the seedlings cultivated in the Park's greenhouses over the summer. Other members of the group joked, "If I get down, you may have to help me back up," testing the creaky knees and stiff backs of their "golden years" in order to help with the planting.

Recurring questions include, "Isn't it kinda late to be planting?" and "What's the survival rate?" First of all, the growing season is very short at this elevation. Snow generally covers the ground from mid to late September until July. These plants have evolved to survive extreme conditions of alpine cold, but new seedlings have one major enemy: lack of water. Summer is a stressful time, even for established plants. Put in the ground in late season, these species stand a far better chance of taking hold. As for the survival rate, it's about 80%, and that's phenomenal.

Now And Then

Day 348 (bonus post): While working with the revegetation crew today, I kept thinking about my grandfather's photos from the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park, specifically one taken in the general area where we were planting. Although my memory misplaced the loop road and its myriad cars to a somewhat higher terrace, you can identify the location by comparing the ridgelines in these two images. I believe my grandfather's photo shows the old Sunrise Campground as it was in 1932, shot from a higher vantage point. The upper photo was taken today just before we began planting.