McLane Creek Drainage is located at the northeast corner of the Capitol Forest, near Olympia. We hiked there today for several hours. A loop trail with interpretive signs goes around a ten acre active beaver pond. McLane Creek, with its chum salmon run, flows next to the pond.
This whole area has been worked over, for the laying of gas pipeline, so it had to be reseeded with a variety of native grasses. Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar and red alder provide a rich forest overstory. The understory is salal, huckleberry, salmonberry, blackberry, Oregon grape, and ferns.
We appreciated the wooden boardwalks through the wetlands, shown, and I enjoyed the trails through the woods. One part of the trail passes directly under the exposed, knarled roots of an ancient cedar. I stood under it, looked up, and saw little settlements of miniture white mushrooms, no bigger than 1/3 of an inch across. They were the sweetest little oportunists, and nearby was an elegantly woven spider's web, abandoned. Mosses, lichen, fungi covered all the tree limbs, so that everything looked almost white, as if dusted with powdered sugar.
It was a good day for visitors, some pushing baby strollers. I knew that with mud up ahead on the trail, they'd encounter difficulty...we always had our kids in backpacks or snugglies when we went hiking. I can remember one year going for hikes in the Morton Arboretum near Lisle, Illinois. George had a toddler on his back, and a newborn in a snuggli on the front. We were in the habit of weekly walks in the forest, and nothing slowed us down.
McLane Creek Drainage is great for birdwatching, too, and for songbirds. We heard chicadees and wrens scolding us as we walked along the trail through the woods. The Creek had an odor that we traced to rotting salmon that had come upstream to spawn. Fortunately, today it did not rain on our hike. We took the canoe, but thought differently about getting out on open water. George was ready to paddle, but I felt I'd freeze to death if I just sat in the canoe. I knew only a hike would keep me warm.
We've gotten home early enough for me to prepare a little dinner, and make a banana bread for the Ruhi Class tonite. All in all, a day well spent.
