Oyster Dome Trail

Author's Comments

The trail begins under a canopy that does not quite feel ancient, and it does not pretend to. This is second growth, working forest country, and there is a particular honesty to that. You climb through it for a couple of hours, and the forest does what forests do in the North Cascades foothills in May - drips, glows, releases small shafts of light onto the moss when the angle is right. Then the trees end and you are standing on bare rock with the San Juans laid out below you like something half-remembered. I came up the first time on a clear morning in late September, alone except for two ravens working the thermals off the dome. Samish Bay was the color of polished pewter. The islands stacked into the distance in flattening shades of blue, the way they do when the marine layer has burned off but the air still holds some moisture. The Olympics were just barely there on the horizon, more idea than mountain. The dome itself is not a difficult summit but the last scramble is exposed enough to demand attention, and I would not want to be up there in wind. Morning is the time. The light comes from behind you and across the water, and the islands separate into legible layers rather than collapsing into haze. By afternoon the sun has moved and the view goes flat. I do not think of this as a secret exactly. The lot fills on weekends and the locals know. But it sits in that quiet middle space between the famous trails and the truly unknown ones, and on a Tuesday in early October you can have the dome largely to yourself.

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