Soddenly Last Summer--Life in a Rain Forest : Those Who Dwell in Woods Are a Different Cut From Folks Living in Drier Climes

It was raining buckets. Really coming down. Nothing to get excited about. Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is the wettest spot in the 48 contiguous states.

Only a handful of people, 150 at the most, live year round in the Hoh, Queets and Quinault--the three temperate zone rain forests in northwestern Washington.

Few others could take it.

Average rainfall is 12 to 17 feet a year. Average yearly rainfall in Los Angeles is 14 inches .

It’s eerie: Moss-draped branches of towering trees canopying a dense forest carpeted with a jungle of lush green plants, herbs, huge ferns, giant edible orange and yellow chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms and other exotic fungi.

The forest is alive with wildlife, big ravens and crows and flying squirrels in the trees. The serene sound of steady falling rain is rent by the bugling call of a male Roosevelt elk summoning a mate.

In the woods are cougar, black bear, deer, bobcat, mink, otter, skunk, shrew, mice and a raft of other animals. It is one of the most pristine, primeval chunks of virgin wilderness in America.

One would almost expect to see elves and leprechauns sliding down drooping moss-laden limbs or taking cover from the downpour under the wings of the gigantic mushrooms.

Those who live in the sodden woods with the pungent fragrance of evergreen may not be leprechauns but most certainly are of a different cut from the folks in drier climes. To live where it rains all the time and not go bananas takes a special kind of person.

“It’s hard to keep your nose above water, that’s for sure,” laughed Gene Owens, 61, unofficial mayor of the Hoh, who owns and operates an A-frame general store on the edge of Olympic National Park.

35 People in All

There are seven families, 35 people in all, living in the tiny community in the Hoh Rain Forest. A sign along the road approaching their seven scattered homes and Owens’ store proclaims wryly: “Congested Area.”

Owens was playing solitaire. He finished out the game, then looked up. Business is always slow. Solitaire is his favorite pastime. Most that stop at his store stop not to buy but to ask how far it is to the Hoh Rain Forest Visitors Center.

Behind Owens is a faded sign his son printed years ago that reads: “13 Miles To Olympic National Park Visitors Center.”

“Yes,” admitted Owens, “it does get a little depressing when it rains day in and day out for three weeks or more without letting up. And, it’s the floods that get downright discouraging. The road was out one year for 122 days. But somehow we manage.”

Owen enjoys the rain forest so much he only leaves twice a year, in April and in November, and then only for a few hours to go shopping for supplies in Forks, population 3,000, the nearest town some 25 miles from his house.

It’s the hunting and fishing that keep Owens and his wife, Mary, in the rain forest. He digs into a counter drawer and comes up with a July, 1982 Outdoor Life that attests to his skill. A story in the magazine is about four master fishermen. He is one of them.

“I catch 40-pound king salmon out of the Hoh River behind my house, catch giant steelhead in the river. I have raised my family in the rain forest and never bought fish or meat. I get an elk every year and if we need more meat I get a deer or two. Buying fish and meat is against my religion,” he said.

How many umbrellas do you go through in a year, he was asked. “Who uses umbrellas? It’s too troublesome. We who live in the rain forest wear wool. Wool even when drenching wet keeps you warm,” said the mayor of the Hoh. The bearded man of the woods always wears a cap. It is said he has no hair, just moss.

“Is it wise for a person to live in a rain forest?” Bright-eyed Minnie Peterson repeated the question sitting on the porch of her homesteader’s cabin between raindrops in the Hoh. She lives on her 160-acre ranch down the road from Owens.

“Well, I’ll tell ya. I’d say it’s wonderful after living in the rain as long as I have. I was born and raised in the rain forest. Lived here all my life. Never left. I’m 87 and still going strong. The rain hasn’t hurt me none,” she said.

Minnie Peterson is of sturdy stock. Her parents migrated to America from Sweden. “I’m grateful to my folks for settling here. They came clear across the country from one coast to the other looking for a place to settle down. They would still be going yet if the Pacific Ocean hadn’t stopped them. This was as far as they could go. And, here they stayed.”

Minnie and her late husband, Oscar, also a Swede, married in the rain forest in 1915. For their honeymoon, they rode on horseback to San Francisco and back, 1,600 miles round trip, just to take in the Panama Exposition.

Oscar was a blacksmith. Minnie, for 50 years, was a packer-guide leading groups on horseback from 1927 through 1977 to spectacular Blue Glacier, one of 60 glaciers in Olympic National Park. Today, she lives by herself, caring for 10 Holstein cows and her three horses, Pinky, Mandy and Freddie.

Ever want to move out of the rain forest, Minnie was asked. “I should say not,” she snorted. A state campgrounds in the rain forest is named in her honor.

Three women run a 160-acre black Angus ranch up the road from Gene Owens’ store--Marie Huelsdonk Lewis, 83, her daughter, Marilyn Lewis, 43, and her daughter Emmi Brown, 20.

Marie is a widow. Marilyn has been married and divorced twice. Emmi is single.

“This is hard country. You have to have a deep appreciation for what it is,” said Marilyn. “I have had two husbands. Both told me to sell the ranch and get the heck out of this godforsaken rain forest. Both were from drier places. They could not take the rain. They left.”

She told of leaving the rain forest once herself--for four days when she flew to Oklahoma. “I thought the sky was going to fall on me. I am not accustomed to seeing a blue sky. I don’t like heat. I don’t like open spaces. I was glad to get back.”

Emmi said: “You can’t be depressed by the rain. You are awed by it. I love to hear the rain on the tin roof of our house, bang, bang, bang, bang. Hardly ever pitter patter. It rains so hard on our roof you can’t hear yourself talking.

“I love the isolation. I guess I’m a hermit at heart.”

Marilyn and her daughter are both summer rangers at Olympic National Park. They know the rain forest better than any of the other rangers who come here from other parts of the country.

“It’s tough on rangers. Tough on their families. They’re not used to anything like the rain we get. The weather makes some of them sick and they have to be transferred out,” said Marilyn. “They’re expected to spend at least a year at a duty post like this. As soon as the year is about up out go the resumes to the other parks.”

The three women also run a pack outfit, guiding visitors to many of the 60 glaciers in Olympic National Park.

“Never a dull moment, I’ll tell you. We don’t have time to let the rain get us down. You have to think positive, not think depressed,” said Marilyn. She has walked in on a mama bear with cubs. Once she turned around and facing her 10 feet away was a cougar. She let out a “whoop,” she said, and the cougar took off.

“We don’t take anything for granted. You have to respect the elements. We go to town once a month for provisions and always take a chain saw and a shovel with us. No telling when a tree will be blown across the road in a storm.”

Marie Lewis is one of four daughters of legendary John Huelsdonk, “the Iron Man of the Hoh,” known as the last of America’s great frontiersman. He was the first settler of the rain forest in 1891. He is credited with Herculean feats, a man of tremendous strength and endurance.

He is said to have wrestled a wild bear and escaped. He opened the rain forest by building roads and trails into it. While he was still alive (he died in 1946) exploits of this seemingly superhuman being were featured in such magazines as Time, National Geographic, Saturday Evening Post and Adventure.

A narrow, 13-mile winding road leads to the ranger station in Queets Rain Forest, home of a 6-foot-5, 210-pound ranger with an uncanny name--Woody Rambo.

Only Rambo lives full time in the Queets Rain Forest. It, too, is a favorite but little-known place for fishermen. Paul Moneymaker, 64, a cabinet maker of Kirkland, Wash., and his wife, Doris, have been vacationing in the Queets every year for 30 years.

They fish and enjoy sitting in the rain under a plastic cover stretched out from their camper, “a grandstand seat for a marvelous display of all kinds of wild animals wandering by,” explained Moneymaker. On this day in the rain forest a five-pointed elk strolled by bugling at the top of his lungs for a female elk. A couple of years ago, the Moneymakers spent three weeks in the rain forest. It rained 19 days straight.

“The rain guarantees our privacy,” Doris Moneymaker said.

Along the north shore of Quinault Lake just outside the national park is another community in a rain forest. It was claimed by homesteaders in 1889 when a few lots on a narrow corridor fronting the lake were open for settlement.

Berdelle Christinsen, 71, a widow who owns and operates an eight-unit motel on the lake, calls living in the rain forest a trade-off. “We do get the rain, but then we have all this beauty and the cleanest air in America,” she said.