Wednesday Vignette: Jumping ahead and picking up where I left off

Wondering about that title? I finally realized I never finished my posts about my trip to Brookings last fall. I sort of trailed off and lost steam. Practically criminal of me, as I'd only just started covering the breathtaking natural areas near the town. For a refresher, see these posts: Brookings Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, you know, if you have a few spare hours and nothing better to do. Perhaps it was a good thing I took a break from those posts, as I could have done nothing but share photos of that trip all through winter (hmm, that doesn't sound so bad, actually).

So now I'm picking that back up. As for jumping ahead, my Wednesday Vignette this week is one of the last photos I took on that trip. There's a lot more to cover, but it fit my mood today too well to wait. Below is a view of Cape Blanco from the slopes of Humbug Mountain (a name which fits my emotional state for the past several months). It's one of the few ocean views visible from the forest-covered coastal peak.

It's not a great photo. The trees are pitch black because the sky and landscape beyond were so bright. I had to make them dark in order to see anything else. Cape Blanco, visible beyond the trees, is sort of hazy and Port Orford is indistinct. I couldn't help interpreting this photo in terms of my current mental state. I've been struggling to make progress for the last several months and am just starting to pick myself back up and forge on toward my goal, that bright, shining, yet somewhat hazy dream of moving to the coast. I'd begun to feel too comfortable in my current surroundings. It can be hard to maintain motivation when you don't have an exterior driving force. It's easy to slack off when circumstances allow you and depression encourages you to. Now I'm reminding myself of my motivation, adjusting my focus and mentally "darkening" the distractions of my current surroundings so I can see my goal more clearly, and hopefully reach it. Nice-sounding words, at least. Now it's up to me to live by them.

Thanks to Anna at Flutter&Hum for hosting Wednesday Vignette. Follow the link to see her vignette this week and check the comments for vignettes from other bloggers.

Now to pick up my Brookings saga where I left off, I had gone up the river from Brookings to Alfred A. Loeb State Park. The next day, I went back up the river just a bit further to the Redwood Nature Trailhead. Actually, I'm fairly certain the trail along the river at Alfred A. Loeb State Park connects to the trailhead, but I didn't walk that far when I was there the day before.

This (nameless, as far as I can tell) stream was roaring heartily from the recent rains. Actually, it was raining that day, as it did for most of my stay in Brookings. I didn't take as many photos as I would have otherwise. Even so, I'm fairly sure it was this excursion that doomed my previous camera, despite it continuing to work for several days afterward. Maybe that's part of the reason I dropped this story, mourning my poor dead camera.

At least I have the experiences, and images of the lovely scenery like this one, for my trouble. Mossy boulders in a stream, with a fern-covered bank in the background. Gimme more!

I wish this photo was a little better focused. I love the glow of the maples, the bit of mistiness, the mix of trees. The three main trees in this photo are, starting from the left, on the fern-covered hill, a Notholithocarpus densiflorus, an Acer macrophyllum, and a Sequoia sempervirens.

The redwoods here are dwarfed by their relatives just to the south in California, but they're still big trees. The largest (not photographed) are around 10 feet in diameter.

Yes, we're still practically at the trailhead. That stream was just so photogenic.

I could easily have stood in the hollow of this burned redwood trunk, with room for at least one more person. From the looks of the ground, flattened by people walking into it, it's a popular photo opportunity.

I love nurse logs and nurse stumps. Look at all the Vaccinium ovatum and redwoods growing from this one.

More evergreen huckleberry, Rhododendron macrophyllum, and other evergreen native shrubs. Part of what I love about this region is how incredibly green it is. Much of the vegetation is evergreen. It makes other parts of the Pacific Northwest seem dull and lifeless in comparison, especially in winter. Other regions, like the western slopes of the Olympic Peninsula, Ohanapecosh near Mt. Rainier, and Beard's Hollow on the Long Beach Peninsula, rival it in the spring and summer, but have more deciduous plants.

I could have brushed off the redwood litter to get a better photo of this massive patch of Goodyera oblongifolia, but chose to leave it as is. This is one of the biggest, densest patches of this native orchid I've seen.

Baby rhododendrons! There were so many. They really are like weeds along the coast.

A fallen branch from up high in one of the redwoods. I hadn't known before that Sequoia sempervirens developed such short needles as they matured. I'd only seen the longer needles of young trees and the lower branches of older ones. At first, I thought it was from a Seqoiadendron giganteum, but I'm fairly certain there aren't any of those in the forests here, and it still has needles rather than the more diminished scales of giant sequoia.

More burned remains of former giants, though still on the smaller end of medium-sized in terms of redwoods. I'm not when the fire that left these remains occurred.

I'll leave off this time with an image I've shared before for a previous Wednesday Vignette, because I just love it so much. The grey trunks and glossy foliage of the redwoods fade into the mist in such a magical way. Water droplets and rain-drenched foliage glisten everywhere. I really need to get back there.