Mt. Rainier Washington State

Our family grew up in Washington state, the Evergreen state, home of Mt. Rainier. Prior posts, I may have mentioned a few times something about the ever-present grey skies and drizzle. I left out The Mountain.  Probably due to said clouds obscured it so often!

 

Mt. Rainier is surrounded by national and state forests and wilderness areas with lovely alpine lakes, meadows, ice cold glacial rivers. The last time my daughter was over she had time to go up the Mountain and do a bit of photography. I’d been admiring her handiwork for some time, so today I thought I would do a little ‘sharing.’    All the photos in the post are hers, so I can not take credit!

I do think genetics sometimes might possibly play a role.  There is 7 creative artists, writers, songwriters in our immediate family and in the distant family background there were numerous as well. So, perhaps….. there could be something in the genes.

 

As a child, I spent many summers clambering over rocks just like these, looking for treasures and gold. I always thought I’d find gold in the river beds up in the Cascade ranges. I never did.  I would only find smooth pebbles and perhaps some black obsidian looking stones.

A frustrated swimmer,  I’d have to make due with the iced, glacial rivers where they calmed into small little shallow holes to jump in.  I guess it didn’t bother me too terribly,  as I kept repeating the process.  No, Never – would I do that now!

 

When our children were growing up we carried on the tradition of family camping, hiking and fishing in the spring, summer and fall. They loved it.  The only part they weren’t so keen on,  was picking the wild mountain blackberries, which would require hours of skinned knees and shredded hands to acquire 1-2 quarts to make a pie.

Those hillsides were not nice and flat to walk on. They weren’t like the citified berry fields where you go and pick your own berries. It was wild. But so beautiful.  I only made the children go a few times. I loved it, they did not. It was lovely to go hike out in the morning and get the berries and be home for lunch. Peaceful too.

 

 

Many times we’d spot deer, elk, chipmunks, bear, otter, fox, coyote, bald eagles and on  a rare occasion mountain lion. Every outing was an adventure. My eyes always scouting for where the deer or fawn might emerge from the forest shadows.

The fresh air, freedom of being outdoors and not cooped up like ‘caged chickens’ was a wonderful outlet for all of us.  Great for getting all that pent up excess energy out, in a good way!

Apparently, someone still wishes to return to the outdoors camping and hiking life.    I wouldn’t mind having a go at snow skiing on the slopes a few more times, perhaps not the diamond runs these days though. More like the ‘bunny tow’  I think.

Mt. Rainier is 14,411 feet  and is the highest mountain in the Cascade mountain range. It is a known ‘active’ volcano. Its original Native American name, from the Lushootseed word “Tahoma”  meant, mother of waters.   It was renamed.    I prefer Mother of Waters.