72 Microseasons of the Pacific Northwest

The winter solstice falls on December 21st, and in the weeks surrounding it the temperate rain forests and old-growth conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest enter their most primordially dark and wet condition. This is not a time of dormancy but of presence: the ancient forests are fully alive, saturated with moisture, their mosses and lichens at maximum hydration and vivid green, their streams running full and cold and clear. In old-growth Sitka spruce and western red cedar forests — the Hoh Rain Forest, the Quinault Valley, the Queets drainage, the lower Skagit Valley old-growth patches — the dominant effect is one of moisture and shadow. Trees 300–500 years old tower 180–220 feet, their bark dark with rain, their roots buried under a meter of accumulated moss and oxalis. At the solstice, midday light in these forests is crepuscular at best, the canopy filtering the low grey sky into a diffuse luminescence. Roosevelt elk stand motionless in forest clearings. River otters fish in rain-pocked pools. The only sounds are rain on broadleaf maple, the roar of the river, and the occasional wren song. The experience of visiting a true Pacific Northwest old-growth stand at the solstice has no equivalent anywhere else in temperate North America. The Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rain Forest has been described by naturalists as one of the most atmospheric places in the western hemisphere at this time of year — the bigleaf maple trunks draped in pendant mosses and licorice ferns, the aisles between them cathedral-quiet and cathedral-dim. The Quinault Loop Trail, the Carbon River Road in Mount Rainier National Park, and the old-growth groves of the Elwha are all accessible on foot year-round. This is the Pacific Northwest's deepest, quietest season.