The Name

Naming something can be tricky.  We call this spot the cabin.  Maybe "cabin" isn't the right word for this place.  It does have that feeling of warmth and wood, hot beverages in warm mugs and misty mountain views.  But it also has electricity, hot water, and propane heater.  So it's not a "roughing it" kind of experience.  Vacation home?  Maybe that describes it a bit better, but then there's no cell phone reception unless you go stand lakeside- and while the neighbors do have a land line- we don't.  Just never felt the need to be connected in that way.

The words I think of to describe this home are: base camp and refuge.

Base camp because Lake Quinault is surrounded by amazing places to experience.  You can walk to old trees with knobby knots and mossy beards, picking salmon berries from bushes like black bears, snap some photos of waterfalls- and then walk back home for breakfast.

Then drive 20 minutes and be at a trail head, hike up, up, up- spying mushrooms and ferns- stopping at every switch back to look behind you and seeing the lush layers of green sweeping away all else.  Reach the top of Colonel Bob and turn around and around- see the sky and ocean.  Notice how the mountains fold into each other like Saturday morning bedsheets.  Lay down on the rock and feel the earth turning.  Then hike back down and be in the hot shower.

Maybe rather than seeing the ocean, you want to feel it and smell it.  Thirty miles- and you are there.  Ruby Beach, Kalaloche Lodge, Beach 3- each with white crested waves, tide pools, eagles overhead, soft sand, drift wood, peaceful places to just sit for hours.  Stroll along the edge of salty water, looking down at the sun glinting off the shells and stone or to the cliffs, the trees with their limbs pushed back from the wind.  Picnic atop boulders, write your name with sticks, build a fort or just invite yourself into one already there.  Then go back to base camp and bake some cookies.

And then there's the lake itself, steps away.  Take out a kayak or canoe and sit with your fingertips in the cold water.  Watch for the fish underneath, curious ravens watching you, so many animals, so many textures and smells.   It just feeds you in ways that are hard to describe with words.

Here's some other ideas about places to go nearby as mentioned in Sunset magazine.

Or maybe you won't want to go anywhere but here.  Maybe it's a place to come and be...still, alone, festive, healed, creative, inspired, lazy...yourself.  It has given moments of all of these and more to many folks over the years. 

Maybe after you've been here for a few years- or maybe even on your first visit- you'll come up with its name.  The words that hold all of what this place means to you.  My oldest son calls it "Memaw's Big House" because I think he was always marveled by all that happens there and around it.  It really is so Big.