Olympic Peninsula, Part 4

The drive across the peninsula went quickly, but I did decide to stop in the Ho Rainforest for a quick photo/video shoot. The park was a bit more crowded than I remember, but the last time I was there, we were back-country camping in the deeper parts of the forest, far from the trails closer to the visitors center. My tight schedule didn't permit anything more than exploring those closer trails, but I was still struck by the lushness and beauty of the forest. After nineteen years, it was still magical.

I don't usually want people in my landscape pictures, but I took this one to show you just how enormous some of these trees are.

I crossed the peninsula and arrived in Suquamish late in the day, finding the location more by intuition than hard directions. Once I was close to the water it was easy to find; roads blocked off and plenty of people milling around. I parked the bike, eager to see what was happening.

Suddenly I found myself feeling like I rarely have in my life; a minority. As I walked around in the crowds, I was acutely aware of how much I didn't look like any of the faces around me; smooth dark skin, jet black hair, high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes; these, in my limited experiences,  were the faces I recognized from every television show, documentary and movie I had ever watched about Native Americans, and I quickly realized that my preconceived notions of what native life was going to be like, fueled by stereotypes and the media, didn't prepare me at all for what I was experiencing.

Instead of appearing in the midst of some sacred ceremony, like a scene from Dances With Wolves, it was if I had popped in on a day in the park. Children in t-shirts and jeans ran and screamed, parents yelled, families lay out on the grass enjoying food bought from the numerous vendors, mothers pushed strollers, and teenagers circled the grounds with the same pack-mentality that you can witness at any mall across the country; the boys shuffling about with baseball caps worn backwards, the girls tugging down on jean skirts that were way shorter than there parents should have allowed them to wear in public. In fact, it was this that struck me the most; that, except for those very distinct, proud faces, these were people living their lives exactly the same as all of the rest of us, and I felt embarrassed for allowing my ignorance to fool me into expecting anything more or less than that.

Some of the boats used to make the journey that is part of Canoe Journey 2011.

I stayed to witness the ceremony that accompanied the docking of the boats, a combination of songs and dances that were significant to both this particular event as well as to the history of native life in general. I was transfixed by the combination of costumes, voices and movements, and when the presentation came to an end and I made my way through the crowds back to my motorcycle, I felt fortunate to have made the trip.

What I found in Suquamish, although at first nothing like I originally expected, ended up being the most authentic experience I could ever hoped to have had. To have been there was to acknowledge that these are people who live in the present world, the twenty first century, with all the baggage and burdens that the modern world brings with it. Instead of a group of people who have remained anachronistically untouched by the outside world, I witnessed a people who have evolved in western culture just the same way that the rest of us have. The authenticity came from their desire to remember the past, not to try to live in it, which is perhaps the most any of us can strive for in the world we now live.

With the sun beginning to set, I found myself having yet another deja vu moment. I had very little time to make it back to the Port Townsend hostel before nightfall, but this time I had the advantage of my secret weapon; a heated jacket liner that plugs into my bike. The feeling of deja vu faded as I made the almost identical drive I had made to the hostel my first night on the peninsula, but this time both comfortable and warm.

I slept in the same bed in the same dorm room that night. Ritual, I had found, surfaced even on the road, and I took solace in the familiarity of my surroundings as I drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow, the 22nd of June, I would be on the deck of the Alaska Marine Highway ferry Columbia, watching the town of Bellingham dissolve into the horizon.