Olympic Peninsula Vacation, Part 2: Meeting our Makah*

Dawn broke on Sunday with the more characteristic gray skies of Cape Flattery — still lovely in its own way. We had coffee in our cabin, packed up, checked out, and headed over to town to go to the Makah Cultural Center and Museum.

It's a wonderful museum, focused on the artifacts excavated at the Ozette village site on the Pacific side of the ancestral Makah lands. A landslide 400 or 500 years ago buried the village and preserved it until the 1970's, when erosion began to expose it. Tribal leaders collaborated with university archaeologists and government agencies to excavate and preserve the artifacts, often devising innovative preservation techniques to deal with the wet, mud-encased objects. Contemporary Makah craftspeople made replicas of many of the items, not just for display in the museum, but also as a way of recovering, preserving, and passing on traditional knowledge — an added layer of significance which I found fascinating and moving.

Seeing these artifacts and learning about the original peoples' way of life, I couldn't help but reflect on how easy our lives are by comparison, and yet at the same time how dangerously dependent we are on things we can't do or make for ourselves. I don't even know how to grow or gather my own food, never mind making my own tools or building my own shelter. (I do know how to knit, so at least I can make some of my own clothing...if someone else harvests the fiber and spins the yarn for me...oh, well, so much for that consolation.) If the tribal way of life was nearly destroyed by the introduction of modern people and their technology, then there's a kind of irony in our vulnerability today to any disruption of our networks of supply and communication.

After lunch in the Warmhouse Restaurant (we persist in enjoying the soft life), we headed east the way we had come, back along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The sky had cleared by then, and we stopped to take a few pictures at a turnout. I was impressed by an arabesqued log of driftwood, inside of which there had grown an artful collection of small plants; it looked like a natural planter box, or an improbable ikebana arrangement. I took a bunch of pictures, because I thought Mom would like to see it; here's a good representative shot.

And there was this striking rock formation as well:


After that, we made our way east and inland, up into Olympic National Park to Sol Duc Campground, where we pitched our tent and planned our next day's hike. Here's a video of our little campsite.

Next: Sol Duc Falls, Deer Lake, and some persuasive evidence that we're not in California anymore.

*Lest my dreadful pun in the title mislead you, the name of the tribe is pronounced "mahKAH," stress on the second syllable, like the large multicolored parrot species, not like JFK pronouncing the title of this post from beyond the grave.