Even as a part-time local, it took me a couple passes to find the tight entrance off 101 to the Cedar Wetlands Nature Preserve just outside Rockaway Beach. (I think there’s a small sign if you’re heading south on 101; northward, the reverse of the sign says Welcome to Rockaway Beach.) I wanted to catch the skunk cabbage in bloom again.
Turns out I was late for the bloom — late March/early April is when the bog lights up with the swamp lanterns. Still I made the mile-long walk down the boardwalk to see the old cedar again.
That narrow entrance off Highway 101 leads to a mighty sight, to this old cedar that has seen it all, from the first sailing ship to anchor in Tillamook Bay in 1788, to the beginning of commercial logging in the 1850s, to the last of the sea otters by 1900.
A champion tree, a witness tree to life on the Oregon coast for maybe the past thousand years or more. Middle-aged in 1700, it shuddered and swayed to the largest earthquake in North American history., a 9.0 that took out many of its compatriots and caused some parts of the coastline to drop several feet, leaving “ghost forests” that can still be seen at low tide.
Total coincidence, but my visit coincided with Earth Day, April 22, so some context is appropriate in the spirit of the occasion. This rare patch of cedar bog is itself part of the rarity that is the Pacific temperate rainforest, the largest temperate rainforest in the world. Temperate rainforests comprise a meager 3% of the earth’s surface. They excel as carbon sinks due to slow decomposition rates.
The main bloom of the skunk cabbage may have been over, but their massive leaves are a sight in their own right. The largest leaves of any native plant in the PNW.
This 50-acre old growth cedar bog was donated by a lumber company. Managed by the Nature Conservancy, it’s now been deeded to the City of Rockaway Beach. It is a hauntingly ancient place, a primordial experience sandwiched between the small towns of this stretch of the Oregon coast. Actually, I kind of like that it’s hard to find.