IT’S THAT TIME of year we star gazers wait for. When we journey to the mountain tops to witness the best meteor shower of the year and search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, having failed this quest on earth.
It is called the Perseid meteor shower. It occurs every year when the Earth passes through a stream of space debris left by comets and asteroids resulting in a cosmic show where it might be possible to see from 50 to 100 meteors an hour, according to NASA.
Theoretically.
I have personally never witnessed that many, but who knows? The quest continues, even though there are many challenges.
This year’s attempt to watch the meteors was hampered by a full moon. You want a dark sky to look for meteors, comets and unidentified flying objects. Then there is the more sinister threat to our star gazing that has grown steadily worse with each passing year, light pollution.
Even in our remote wilderness, the lights of greater Pugetopolis cast an ugly smear across the eastern night sky. It’s a problem that has gotten steadily worse since the invention of the street light.
Then there is an even greater threat to star gazing which we witnessed last Saturday night, a forest fire! By now we all know about the human-caused Bear Gulch fire on Lake Cushman near Hood Canal. It was started on the Fourth of July and, as of last week, it was estimated to be burning 5,136 acres on steep ground from the lake clear up onto Mt. Rose and, depending on which way the wind shifts, it’s been smoking up a good portion of the Olympic Peninsula.
The latest fire started last Saturday in the Upper Hoh River country. Even from five miles away, it was a terrifying spectacle that made you forget all about star gazing. Balls of flame were shooting up in the sky. A thick layer of brown smoke rolled down the Snahapish and Clearwater valleys. This, after the hottest day of the summer with an east wind fanning the flames. There was no lightning. Bears don’t smoke, so the fire was likely human caused.
Humans have been starting forest fires on the Olympic Peninsula as long as we have been here. The Native Americans burned the prairies every three to five years to attract game and remove weeds from the camas patches.
With the arrival of the Europeans, fires became more frequent. James Swan described a Fourth of July on Shoalwater Bay in 1855 where the oystermen filled a cedar stump that was 60 feet around and 20 feet tall with dry spruce limbs as part of the celebration. The party agreed they had never had a “pleasanter” Fourth. The fire burned the surrounding forest until extinguished by the winter rains.
The early homesteaders looked upon the inexhaustible forests as nothing more than coniferous weeds that got in the way of modern agriculture. They generally had one basic tool to clear their stump ranches, and that was fire, and fires got away.
All you have to do is look at a map and notice names like Burnt Hill, Burnt Mountain, Mt. Baldy and Baldy Ridge to get the idea this country is highly flammable.
Fortunately, these days there are a lot of dedicated firefighters ready to get to work at a moment’s notice. That’s what happened last Saturday night on the upper Hoh, where the fire was put out by the state Department of Natural Resources and Clearwater Corrections fire crews, and for that, we are extremely grateful.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.