A Return to Washington’s Primeval Rain Forest : Trip back to the Olympic Peninsula reaffirms all the remembered joys of childhood.

“To this day I am a romantic of waterfalls,” wrote novelist and critic Mary McCarthy in “How I Grew.” I understand exactly what she meant.

McCarthy spent her childhood summers at Lake Crescent--on the northern edge of a magical rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula in the far northwest corner of Washington. It is the only rain forest on the North American continent, and I had been similarly bewitched by it when I was a child.

In 1981, the United Nations designated the 1,400-square-mile Olympic National Park--which shelters the Olympic Rain Forest--a World Heritage Site, ranking it with the pyramids of Egypt and other wonders of the world. Now, with some trepidation, I was going back to see if the old magic was still there.

On the southern edge of the forest at the Lake Quinault Lodge, I curled in a wicker chair in front of the huge fireplace, reading “Green Mansions” by W. H. Hudson. No matter that the rain forest Hudson so lovingly evoked was in Guyana. My northern hemlocks, spruce and fir were equally majestic and dripping with moss, the shadows they cast as deep and mysterious, and the shafts of sunlight that penetrated their dense foliage lighted ferns and fallen logs with the same exquisite, greenish-golden tint that Hudson saw in South America.

But I wondered if toting such a ragbag of romantic memories would ruin this return trip to the Olympic Peninsula. Our plan was to take a ferry from Seattle to Bremerton, loop south to Lake Quinault, then drive north up the Pacific Coast to the northwesternmost tip of the contiguous United States at Cape Flattery and skirt the northern edge of the park.

We would stop en route at Sol Duc Hot Springs, Lake Crescent and Hurricane Ridge. The Olympic National Park’s great wilderness, covering the heart of the peninsula, has not been cut through by roads. The old U.S. 101, widened and improved, still circles the park, with small roads serving attractions on the park’s periphery.

We left Seattle at dawn one morning in mid-July last year, churning away from the dock on the Kitsap ferry for the 50-minute ride to Bremerton. On the outside deck, the wind was chilly. We pulled on sweaters and leaned on the railing to watch the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainier--back-lit by the rising sun--recede as we sailed across Puget Sound on one of the most scenic ferryboat rides in the Northwest.

Temperatures were in the mid-60s. But my hardy Northwest son, Blair, and his friend, Debbie, were comfortable in shorts and T-shirts like the rest of the locals. They laughed at my enthusiasm for the afternoon fire that was burning in the fireplace when we arrived at Lake Quinault Lodge. The fireplace took four-foot logs; it was as big as I remembered it.

The sun teased in and out behind gray rain clouds as we ate a late lunch in the lodge dining room, overlooking the manicured green lawn that slopes down to the lake. I had pressed my nose against these same dining-room windows while my parents lingered over their morning coffee, watching clouds of tiny iridescent hummingbirds in their aerial dance on a stage of red rhododendrons below.

Lunch over, we hurried back to the car, hoping to beat the rain. After a quick stop at the Quinault Ranger Station to pick up maps and information sheets, we drove about 10 miles up the Quinault River Valley, where the gravel road forked. Straight ahead lay the trail head for Enchanted Valley, famous for its vertical walls and high waterfalls.

Instead we forked left 5 1/2 miles up the steep, winding North Fork Quinault Road to its end at the Three Lakes trail head. The sun came out, sending streams of golden light down through the giant trees. I stepped onto the moss-cushioned trail, inhaled the lush aroma of moist humus mixed with fragrant conifer needles and, in a rush, all my remembered joys were reaffirmed.

“Incredible,” Debbie murmured in a hushed voice. She pointed to a huge fallen tree with a gigantic upended root mass. “A nurse tree,” she said, focusing her camera on the surrealistic sculpture of tangled roots.

Thick ferns nearly hid the trail. We walked single-file. “Foam flowers,” Debbie whispered as she trained her wide-angle lens on a swath of forest floor carpeted by delicate white blossoms. A blissful silence enveloped us. Then, suddenly, a great wail pierced the air. We froze in our tracks. A fallen hiker? A wounded cougar? We waited. Nothing. So we went on.

The trail wound uphill. Here the trees were thicker and taller, about 100 to 150 feet, as high as 14- to 16-story buildings. Then, close by, another loud, wrenching moan. I stopped, expecting an injured animal to lunge in our path. But Blair, in the lead, motioned us on reassuringly. “It’s a huge tree in agony,” he explained. “Probably about to fall.”

The old tree’s death cries seemed heartbreakingly mammalian. Its straight proud trunk was slowly listing and eventually would crash down to become another nurse tree replenishing the jungly fertility of this protected forest.

We scrambled down the path to Irely Lake. The only person we had met was a National Forest Service volunteer quietly hand-cutting undergrowth from the trail.

Olympic National Park encompasses 57 miles of rugged Pacific Ocean coastline that I happily found unchanged. Long, clean sandy beaches are bordered by great gray, sea-smoothed logs tossed up by the ocean; giant sea stacks carved from the cliffs by the pounding surf stand offshore like moated castles, and tide pools full of pink and purple sea anemones and other small sea animals pulsate to the rhythm of the caressing waves.

What has changed along the coastal road outside the park is the increased number of logging clear-cuts that are evident in spite of narrow “visual corridors”--lines of Potemkin trees left standing beside the highway to hide these bald spots in the old-growth forest. An acrimonious battle reverberates around the Olympic Peninsula between loggers worried about losing their jobs and environmentalists worried about the loss of an ecological balance for the region due to timber harvesting.

This scarring of the landscape, coupled with an enormous increase in fishermen’s boat trailers and RVs parked in dense profusion from Clallam Bay to Neah Bay mar the natural beauty of the drive along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At Cape Flattery, I slipped and slid down a trail of mud-covered roots to stand at the farthest point of what English explorer Capt. George Vancouver called “the prow of the continent.” As if in reward, a spectacular sunset spread along the infinity of the ocean and cast a rosy glow over the lighthouse on tiny Tatoosh Island, a few waves away at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

At 8 p.m. the sun was still shining on the treetops as we drove down the loveliest road yet into Sol Duc Hot Springs.

From 1912-1916, Sol Duc had been the spot on the Olympic Peninsula. In spite of the fact that visitors had to take a steamer the length of Lake Crescent to reach it, 10,000 people a year booked into the elegant, 165-room Sol Duc Hot Springs Hotel to luxuriate and drink the healthful mineral waters.

According to legend, in 1916, as the grand old hotel was burning down, its player piano burst into the funeral march from Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) by Beethoven.

Now the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort, with its lodge and cabins, is very simple but comfortable. The food is excellent, and the campsites splendid. On the wide, easy trails, grandparents introduce their grandchildren to the rain forest and hold their hands tightly on the high bridge overlooking Sol Duc waterfall.

I grabbed the handrail down the ramp into the medium-hot mineral pool behind the Sol Duc lodge and sat on the circular bench chin-deep in water beside four giggling Japanese ladies. Blair and Debbie lounged briefly in the hottest pool (there is a lukewarm one also), then dove into the large swimming pool where I joined them to float.

At Lake Crescent Lodge, only 20 minutes from Sol Duc, we took our coffee through the lobby now filled with totem poles and a huge elk head over the fireplace, to the quiet glassed-in veranda overlooking the lake. The big card room, with framed poems and mottoes on the walls that Mary McCarthy remembered, is gone.

Attractive cottages of the kind I remember are scattered about the grounds, including the one built in 1937 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s visit when he was considering the Olympic Peninsula for national park status.

At the mile-high visitor center on Hurricane Ridge, I looked down into the long, deep Elwha Valley where long ago my brother first hiked into the Olympic Mountains. He and his friend carried a small canvas pup tent, a couple of bedrolls and not much else.

Now high-tech hikers carry stoves, camp in established sites and obtain punch cards from the National Park Service for salmon and steelhead fishing. Back-country regulations are attempts to ensure a wilderness environment as unspoiled as that experienced in earlier, more innocent times.

And they have succeeded. The old magic on “the prow of the continent” still holds. And there is more there to explore than I dreamed of.

On the Olympic Peninsula, romantic memories can not only be revived but richly replenished.

GUIDEBOOK: Washington’s Olympic Peninsula

Getting there: From Seattle, take a Washington State ferry to Bremerton. From there, follow Washington 3, 108 and 12 to Aberdeen, where you pick up U.S. 101, which circles the Olympic Peninsula. At Sappho, a small road cuts off to Clallam Bay and Neah Bay on Washington 112.

Return to Seattle via Washington 104 south of Discovery Bay to Kingston, where there is a ferry to Edmonds, just north of Seattle. Or continue on 101 along the scenic Hood Canal to Washington 106 and 3 back to Bremerton.

For ferry schedules, call Washington State Ferries at (206) 464-6400.

When to go: Best time is mid-May through mid-October, but be prepared for rain any time. August and September are the most popular months. Reservations should be made several months ahead.

Where to stay: Lake Quinault Lodge, P.O. Box 7, Quinault, Wash. 98575, (206) 288-2571. Rooms from $75, suites $190.

Kalaloch Lodge, H.C. 80, Box 1100, Forks, Wash. 98331, (206) 962-2271. Lodge rooms $48-$68. Bluff cabins $78-$85. Sea Crest House, rooms $88, suites $90. Log cabins, $90-$110.

Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort, P.O. Box 2169, Port Angeles, Wash. 98362, (206) 327-3583. Cabins $66-$73. RV sites, $13 per night.

Lake Crescent Lodge, H.C. 62, Box 11, Port Angeles, Wash. 98362-9798, (206) 928-3211. Lodge rooms $52-$79. Cottages $79-$107.

For more information: Write the Forks Joint Information Center, National Park Service/U.S. Forest Service, Star Route 1, Box 185, Forks, Wash. 98331, for a U.S. Department of Agriculture/U.S. Forest Service map of the Olympic National Park. It is a topographical map that includes all essential information about the Olympic Peninsula, including recreation sites and facilities.

For information about field seminars, family camps or the Elderhostel program at the Olympic Park Institute, write Olympic Park Institute, H.C. 62 Box 9T, Port Angeles, Wash. 98362.