Boardwalk
to the Pacific

I woke around 6:30 Saturday morning intending to catch the 7:55 ferry to Bainbridge Island. It did not take long to realize that plan was already gone. We left the house around 8:10 instead and made the 8:55 boat—still early enough for the whole weekend to feel open in front of us.

On the ferry, Birch got a pretzel, I found coffee, and we went outside to watch Seattle recede while Bainbridge drew closer. It felt like the real beginning: the city fading into the clouds behind us, the peninsula somewhere beyond the island ahead.

From Bainbridge we drove toward Port Angeles. At Walmart we bought the rest of our food and six gallons of water. Birch searched for Magic cards while I tried to make sure we had what we needed. At the Olympic National Park Wilderness Information Center in Port Angeles, we picked up a bear canister and went over the practical details of camping in bear country.

We stopped for lunch at Lake Crescent Lodge and ate in the sunroom—the same place our whole family, minus Douglas, who had not been born yet, had eaten about six years earlier. We ordered fried mushrooms with aioli, a roasted-vegetable hero with horseradish, fries, and some Sahale snacks for the trail. The lodge was familiar enough to feel like a hinge between an older family trip and this new one with just Birch and me.

At the Ozette trailhead, Birch carried the camping gear while I carried all six gallons of water. We walked about three miles through the rainforest, much of it on raised boardwalk, then roughly another mile along the beach to South Sand Point. We found fresh bear poop but never saw the bear. What I felt most clearly was the water. Our packs were heavy.

When the forest finally opened, the Pacific appeared all at once. The campsite was sparse: a privy back in the trees, a few old driftwood structures, and enough level ground above the tide line for our tent. We set up on the beach.

Birch immediately began building a “store for trading,” arranging odds and ends from the beach beneath the driftwood. Watching him, I missed having his siblings there for the kind of imaginary play that seems to multiply when they are together.

Then he changed into his swimsuit and went into the waves. He never complained about the cold. My own feet went numb almost immediately, but he kept moving in and out with the water as if temperature were only a minor suggestion.

We walked south and found the best tide pools either of us had ever seen. It was low tide, which exposed clear, sandy-bottomed pools among isolated rocks. Narrow channels formed a lattice between them, with miniature waterfalls dropping from one pool into the next. There were crabs, anemones, starfish, spotted fish, and greens so vivid they looked lit from within. Every few steps revealed another small world.

Back at camp we opened the bear canister and ate hummus, pita, and trail mix. Everything became sandy. It was impossible to handle food, sit down, or crawl into the tent without bringing part of the beach along.

We had forgotten a flashlight and had not brought books. Sunset came around eight, and with the air getting colder there was no reason to stay outside. In the tent I read the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh from my phone. We were asleep by nine, the surf carrying on beyond the nylon.

Birch woke me several times beginning around five. I kept finding a little more sleep in the sound of the ocean. When we finally got up, we returned to the tide pools. This time I wore shoes, which made me feel more like an observer than a participant. Birch went barefoot again.

Breakfast was blueberry bagels with peanut butter, plus whatever snacks made sense. Birch played in the water while I took down the tent and repacked everything. We started north around 9:45.

Birch moved with pure energy—noises, splashing, constant motion—especially whenever the water reached him. I love that quality in him and envy it a little. He does not merely walk beside the ocean; he joins it.

We passed sand dollars and seagulls on the way to Sand Point Beach. There were about six tents there, compared with only one or two near our site. A large rocky hill rose above the beach. Birch went straight up the face of it, then became nervous about coming down. We found the trail and climbed together. At the top he continued farther than I did, then chose his own off-trail route back down.

Before the trip I had considered completing the full Ozette triangle: roughly nine miles total, which would have made Sunday about six miles. Standing there, tired and still carrying too much, the safer choice was obvious. This was our first backpacking trip. Three miles back through the forest was enough.

We were both very tired by the end, and the gear was still heavy. Next time I would train more and bring less. But Birch did it. He carried his pack from the Pacific, over the boardwalk, and back to the trailhead.

Before heading back to the car, I poured out the three gallons of water we still had left—a precise measure of how much we had overpacked. We returned the bear canister in Port Angeles and drove toward Bainbridge. The ferry line was long, and there was no clever shortcut around it. We waited somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Birch stayed calm through all of it—remarkably willing to let the day move at the speed it was going to move.

On the ferry he ate popcorn while Mount Rainier came into view. This time Seattle approached and Bainbridge receded. At home, Stacey had bánh mì waiting for us.

It had been less than two days—less than forty-eight hours—out of the city, through the woods, onto the beach, and back again. Long enough to make a first backpacking trip feel like a complete little world.