New Year’s Day 2019 dawned cold and clear as I bundled into my jacket and boots to join others for the First Day Hike at Lewis and Clark State Park.
With a family gathering planned in Washougal, I hesitated about joining the hike as I knew I’d need to leave early, but even a short hike through old-growth forest with an informative guide is worth every minute.
Alysa Adams, a Washington State Parks interpretive specialist, guided more than two dozen people and pets along the Trail of the Deer through the historic park along the old Cowlitz Trail extension of the Oregon Trail north of Toledo.
All 50 states offer free First Day Hikes on New Year’s Day to help people jumpstart the year. Last year nearly 55,000 people participated nationally and hiked more than 133,000 miles, according to the America’s State Parks website.
Washington offered First Day Hikes at nearly 40 state parks this year on one of a dozen free days for 2019, meaning visitors didn’t need a Discover Pass or other permit to participate. This is the third year Lewis and Clark Park has hosted the event, thanks to Adams.
“I’m the one that really begged to have it here,” she said.
We gathered at 10 a.m. beside a blazing fire with refreshments nearby as we learned about animals that frequent the park. The park’s shelter, restrooms, and other structures were built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal Program during the Great Depression that put men between 18 and 25 to work on public projects. They lived there as they worked and built the structures entirely with available logs, rocks, and other materials in the park.
Before leaving for the two-mile hike, Adams encouraged us to try to walk on the trail and pack out anything we pack in.
“All we’re going to leave is footprints and all we’re going to take is memories,” she said.
Among those on the hike were Lewis County Commissioners Edna Fund and Gary Stamper. I also ran into a Toledo exercise buddy, Judy Markle, and her husband, Mike.
I’ve been in the park several times over the years. In fact, we held our rehearsal dinner there years ago the night before our wedding 27 years ago. During his high school years, my son ran through the park’s trails along with other cross-country competitors.
But on the trip with Adams, I learned a lot about the old-growth forest and biodiversity. People hiked at their own pace but gathered at 10 stops along the way to learn about the trees, history, and ecosystem.
We passed over Boone Creek, the park’s main water source. We scampered around a few wet spots on the pathway. Adams encouraged us to use all five senses to experience the old-growth forest during our respite from the fast-paced world.
As we stopped before a 300-year-old western red cedar, she described the cedars as grandmothers of the forest. Native Americans used the trees for dugout canoes, cedar plank longhouses, clothing, and tools, she said.
“They would just take what they needed and go on,” Adams said. “Native American people also believed these trees were strong and powerful, and a lot of people liked to sit with their back up against the tree and absorb the power.”
She directed us to notice a section of smaller trees, where six decades ago the Columbus Day windstorm uprooted many cedars.
As we continued up the path, we stopped where a huge cedar had toppled over, leaving a gaping hole where its root ball had been. Adams explained that rain sweeps material from the forest into the hole “and it essentially becomes a vat of nutrients.”
“Trenches and mounds add to the complexity of a forest,” she said. “It adds to the biodiversity of a forest. The number of species is enhanced when you have trenches and mounds.”
She also pointed to a giant cedar tree growing out of the stump and noted, “This tree is still sustaining the forest.”
Adams pointed out fungus in the forest, burrowing insects creating rivets in sticks, red huckleberry bushes, and occasional trees that died but replenish the ecosystem through decomposition and opening the overhead canopy.
“Nature is great, but nature is also pretty hard,” Adams said. “Things live and things die. It’s always a battle out there.”
She noted a decomposing tree where insects fill their bellies and leave behind frass, a fragile perforated material created by insect excrement.
“Insect excrement is essentially the newest soil for our forest,” Adams said. “It’s incredible the amount of micro biodiversity happening in every square inch of this forest.”
Western red cedar smells sweet and spicy, but more so in the summer when it’s dry. She explained that coniferous trees are odoriferous, meaning those trees have the strongest fragrance. One time she led a group of children into the forest and one boy seemed out of sorts the entire time. Afterward, he spoke to her and said: “You know what, lady? I think it’s pretty dangerous you took us out to a carnivorous forest.”
Adams asked the hikers to jump back in time to 1922, when 10,000 people in Model T Fords seeking auto adventures visited the newly opened Lewis and Clark Park for brief stops and short hikes. Although the Corps of Discovery’s Meriwether Lewis and William Clark never ventured this far north, Adams said the park received its name because “it was akin to a great wilderness to be explored.”
She spoke of John R. Jackson, the first European American to settle north of the Columbia River, and his wife, Matilda, whose little cabin just north of the park served as the region’s first courthouse, first general store, and first post office.
“We’re preserving the legacy of this land,” she said.
Standing next to a 600-year-old giant Douglas fir tree, which self-pruned its lower branches over the centuries, Adams asked people to jump back in time to the 1400s when that tree, now a grandfather in the forest, would have just been a seedling or tiny sprout.
Pointing to an old snag, a dead tree still standing in the forest, which it could do for 200 years, Adams explained it decomposes from the top down and serves as home to 80 different species of birds, small mammals, insects and other life.
After the hike, Markle said, “It felt good to do something positive on the first day of the year.” As they returned to their car, her husband told her, “We need to do more of this.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
