La Push Day 1 - The Language Project Update

So my travels have begun. La Push Washington. Home of the Quileute peoples. Fishermen. Sealers and whalers. Boat builders. Descended from wolves. And of course, speakers of the Quileute language. Quileute is a language unrelated to any other, which contains no nasal sounds and is spoken with the tongue between the teeth a great deal of the time (not unlike Sylvester the cat). Quileute is a language that will also soon be extinct. Its not that there’s no record of the language or that no memory of its existence will remain, but only the most elderly Quileute are native speakers. Soon there will be no one left who learned and used the language in their home as children. It will cease to be a living language.

It was a beautiful day in La Push when I arrived on Monday afternoon. As I drove through the densely forested valleys of the Olympic Mountains heading toward Forks, I could feel the temperature inching it’s way up from the upper 50’s around the shores of the icy and deeply mysterious Crescent Lake to the low 80’s by the time I rolled past the Lonesome River store – La Push’s only store, a nicely appointed convenience mart with a traditional cedar front adorned with carved pictures of fish and whales in the distinctive Northwest Native American style and the correlating Quileute words spelled out next to them.

Yes, La Push is predictably small, a vibrant mix of small houses and trailers set on narrow plots in various states of repair and disrepair, many surrounded by boats and motors and vehicles ranging from bikes and Big Wheels to ATVs to cars of every age and state and dogs of a similar variety. Others are neat and clean and surrounded by flower gardens and brown picket fences. There is no division or discernable order to their arrangement – the neatest and cleanest shares a fence with the least maintained. Taken together, it's a picture of gritty charm.

But development and progress are also apparent everywhere you look or walk, with newer buildings such as the tribal office and the school along the main street, as well as a brand new hotel and cabins and an RV park under construction as part of the Oceanside Resort. Along the waterfront there’s  a small, but seemingly active fishery, a charming diner with stunning views of the bay, a post office, a marina and a Coast Guard Station. But the draw here is not the architecture. It’s the ocean.

The Quileute have occupied this spit of land, the Westernmost on the Olympic Peninsula, for thousands of years (really!) – the shoreline is shaped by a series of wide coves or bays. The town sits on a “corner” of land facing two of these coves, one of which is protected by a large natural breakwater and tall butte-like, tree-topped islets. When I say tall – I mean breathtaking. Up to 160 feet in the case of Ak-A-Lat or James Isle, where tribal elders were traditionally taken after their death and placed in their canoes in the tops of the trees to be delivered to the gods. The breakwaters are covered in stone and course grasses and huge pieces of driftwood. Entire trees in most cases, bleached by sun and water, stripped and polished and impressive. The resort faces the widest of these bays, which lacks such a breakwater, meaning it has a sandy beach and a view out to sea and a virtual wall of tree-sized driftwood at the high water mark, barring access to anyone unwilling to climb or wend their way through the natural maze.

Although sunny days can be rare around here (La Push is only a few miles from the Hoh Rainforest and receives about 115 inches of rain a year), Monday was spectacular and the views were glorious.

It turned out that I had my wires crossed with the Quileute leadership and wasn’t expected until Tuesday– so I did my best to make the most of it and spent some time in the evening recording the sound of the surf roaring in to the beach. I needed to test my equipment and my set-up and besides, it was unusually clear and moonless, so the stars and Venus and the Milky Way were putting on a show that I didn’t want to miss.

Tuesday (which is actually day 2) I was able to meet with the tribal council, but not much else. Life moves slowly here, schedules are somewhat fluid. This evening I meet with the school administrators. Tomorrow evening I attend a drum group. In between I hope to be able to track down a few of the elders and get some of the more serious work of the trip set in motion.

A side note to all the teenage girls who may be reading – I have not met any boys names Edward Black or any girls named Bella. I’m not aware of having come across any werewolves or any vampires, however I’ve been told that I would be unlikely to recognize it if I had. If I discover anything even slightly suspicious, you’ll be the first to know.

Here's a view of First Beach from the far West end - the driftwood detritus gets larger as you move up the beach. At the far end many of the washed up tree trunks have diameters of over 8 foot.