Day 273: Navigating trailless forest in pre-dawn twilight presents a few challenges most hikers will never experience, but in order to be through the gate before casual Park visitors started lining up and to have the strenuous portion of my hike behind me before the heat of the day, I was out well before sunrise, pushing through the devil's club and clambering over tangles of logs and limbs en route to the only location in Mount Rainier National Park where Cephalanthera austiniae is known to occur. The sun still had not climbed above the horizon when I spotted the first one. As I unshouldered my pack and set up the tripod to capture its pristine whiteness in the flat light, a second one caught my eye, then a third and fourth together, and a fifth beside them. The census eventually reached fifteen: not a record, but definitely a respectable number, and all within a plot of land generously estimated to be 150' x 75'. Why here? What mycorrhizal component exists in this pocket ecology to support these plants? The Phantom knows, but I do not.
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