Olympic National Park Poetry Walks
The North Olympic Library System (NOLS) is again partnering with
Olympic National Park to offer Poetry Walks along four park trails for
National Poetry Month (https://www.nols.org/poetry-walks/).
I walked three of the trails – the short, wheelchair accessible Madison Falls Trail, The Living Forest Trail, and the Peabody Creek Trail. Like the diverse forest ecosystems embodied by the Park, from Pacific Coast beach to rainforest to treeless and snow-covered high alpine, the range of poets and poems selected by NOLS and the Park displayed on poster boards stuck in the earth like campaign signs were astonishing and surprising. Haiku, short poems, longer poems. Poets included Emily Dickinson, Shel Silverstein, Gary Snyder and Carlos Castaneda (speaking through Don Juan!). My favorite trail was Peabody Creek because it was the longest and offered the most solitude. The Pacific wren hidden in a cedar that ruptured the forest silence with its lovely trill just as I encountered Castaneda’s Conditions of a Solitary Bird deepened my experience of this trail too. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Olympic National Park through May 31 take a hike and a read!
Editor’s Note: Thank you so much Michael for sharing this.
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 
Bravo, Michael. It’s a great concept!