The Moss-Cloaked Giants of Bay Center

Pioneer Life in Washington Territory

BAY CENTER, PACIFIC CO., W. T. January 12, 1877

Editor Times — Midwinter still finds me at the seaside, at exactly too coolness rather, for a rainless, and a quiet, easy place to get a living. Any one who comes here finds it a hard place to leave. As yet the winter has been very little odder than the summer, and the rain not half so bad. Last winter it rained almost incessantly, which made the people grumble terribly, but any "school marm" who has waded through the snows of Northern New York would think rain a mighty light affliction. One who complains this winter would grumble at Paradise. The weather is warm and bright, and I think there has been but one day in which the little children could not play out-doors between lessons.

Never before in my long experience have I taught a term of school with neither rain nor mud, with no grumbling by the parents, no punishment by the teacher, no fighting by the boys, no mischief by the girls. Indeed, this little school in the backwoods is one of the best I ever found. Neither does it seem so very backwoodsy. I try to imagine myself a hardy pioneer, but cannot succeed in arousing much self-pity.

Few farmhouses in Jefferson county are larger or more convenient than the one in which I have found a home. Few pioneers have houses with all modern conveniences, dining-rooms and verandas, parlors with bay windows filled with flowers directly from Vick's, etc. My room is nicely carpeted and well furnished. One large window, filled with plants that would do as well outside, looks out upon a flower garden, in which are now in full bloom, primroses, pansies, pinks, polyanthus, sweet alyssium, feather moss, chrysanthemums, marigolds, blue-bells, foxglove, daisies, Scotch broom, sweet clover, larkspur; and yet the ground is so new, that ferns spring up in every unoccupied corner.

A little more than two years ago this was an unbroken wilderness, the ground covered with trees, some of which were from twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, and two hundred feet high. The view from my back window proves recent settlement. A few feet from the back door the stumps are as thick as the stubble in the harvest field; huge logs are piled up and strewn about in every direction; blackened roots, huge, ungainly limbs, piles of brush, splintered stumps, all making an unsightly mass, the ugliness of which is only slightly relieved by the patches of moss, golden and green, and the salal bushes, ferns and blackberry vines, still green as in mid summer.

About two years ago, two young oystermen bought the whole of Goose Point, a peninsula near the center of the bay, and commenced clearing for a settlement. After clearing a little spot, one built a large and handsome house, married a nice little girl, and settled down. Soon after a brother, who was already married and had a large family, built a house still larger and finer close beside him. Their homes and surroundings were so pleasant, that others came in; then they built a good school house, and had preaching and Sunday school; and then more people came, until there are fifteen families, a hundred people, and a very flourishing little community.

There is an enthusiastic little church, and this year it is the intention to support a school for nine months. My eldest pupil, aged 17, is the only old maid we have; but there are several wives under 20. When a new girl comes, there is a grabbing and snatching among the bachelors, and mothers dare not trust their daughters out of their sight. O, for a few good, sensible and industrious girls, from twenty years old upwards! If they were willing to rough it little, they would be reasonably sure of homes and husbands. I can not become reconciled to these early marriages, to seeing children jump into womanhood without any experience of girlhood; to seeing women from twenty-five to thirty with a house full of children, some larger than themselves.

Emigrants are coming in thicker and faster, and I think after a few years the country will be developed. Those who are weary of the biting of old Zero, and the scorching of old Sol, others who are tired of the cold prairie winds, or starved out by the depredations of the grasshopper and grasshoppers, are turning their longing eyes toward a comfortable climate. I believe there is no place in the known world, except, perhaps in some parts of California, where there is less difference in the mean temperature of summer and winter.

My letters seem to attracting some attention among some who contemplate emigrating, and I am very fearful of misleading others by my own love of novelty and natural sympathy. I know very little of farming or any other business pertaining to the stronger sex but I keep my eyes open, make diligent inquiries, and tell the truth as I understand it. I have no desire to make my home here, but am quite content to remain a few years. A few more teachers are needed and with health and ambition, could do well. Some nurses and housekeepers are also in demand.

I have reason to think that the resources of dairying and stock raising are not half developed. There is still some good prairie land, and more that can be bought for a small sum. Cattle take care of themselves through the winter, and the tideland grass and lot of butter which always commands a good price.

If a man was well he is tolerably sure of a good support. The people here are like our own; they are not disposed to be selfish; nor is there any cause of extreme poverty, though they live just now and depend on their dairy milk. I am quite sure that these oystermen do not work as hard as eastern farmers; in fact no more here works as hard as one did in the east though it is scarcely ever cold enough or warm enough to make a point.

Well here it is mud-amidst, and a dozen kinds of flowers in bloom; certainly not in the profusion of spring; flowers cannot be blooming all the time, they must have some rest; but any plant that has its seeds has sprung up anew, and is now in bloom, besides the wild flowers and perpetual bloomers.

It is Saturday, and we will go walking through the grove of the settlement, which has been clear, but is again blocked by trunks of fallen trees. We must be very careful, for the wood-choppers are very busy today, and occasionally we hear a crash like a young earthquake. The best houses are in front, so as we go back into the woods, we pass several lately erected, built of rough boards, but already comfortable in this mild weather. Before the settler erects his cabin, he cuts down all the trees around it, for one of these giants of the forest would crush it to atoms. As clearing is a slow process, his house is surrounded by stumps and logs in dire confusion, which must be destroyed by fire.

We pass along and through the well cleared wagon road, stopping by the way to pick delicate spring flowers, ferns of every variety, long, trailing blackberry vines, still green and showing occasional blossoms; but our treasure of treasures is the moss, in every shade of green and yellow, and of every imaginable variety. Any words that I can command are so inadequate to describe it, and it loses so much of its beauty in drying, that I despair of ever giving my friends an idea of its loveliness and variety. Not only its beauty, but its substance is wonderful. Not a bit of earth, nor a root, nor twig, nor trunk nor branch is left uncovered. In the low, swampy places it fairly runs rict. The long greenish-gray species is suspended in long fragments from every tiny twig; festooned from branch to branch; swaying with the wind in silver streamers from six to ten feet in length. Nothing that I ever saw of sylvan beauty excels it. We gather it in apronfuls; weave it in wreaths to decorate our rooms, tie it in bunches to loop back our curtains; make fancy baskets and other ornaments, for we frontier women are not so destitute of taste that we cannot enjoy the beauties of nature.

But we will never get through the woods at this rate. We pass on, and I find an unexpected impediment to our progress in the shape of a huge log which has lately been felled across the road. The thoughtful woodman has cut steps, two or three on each side, so that we pass over as on a stile. Talk of jumping over such logs! We might as well try to jump over a two-story house. That impediment and a few more like it surmounted, our road is clear, and we have a chance to admire the primitive forest, which is more sublime than beautiful. The trees are all spruce, and all old; scarcely a young one to be seen; and there is no underbrush except salal and a few other bushes and ferns; all green as in Summer. Such strange-looking trees I never saw before. Their roots are more than half out of the ground, and they look like giants standing on tip-toe. They stand so that Robinson Crusoe might use one for a grave.

I being only a superficial observer, can faintly describe the appearance of things, but I can only guess at the reason why. Certainly it is the strangest woods I ever saw. The choppers are often obliged to stand on a board fastened in the tree, from ten to twenty feet from the ground. These trees grow up straight until they get tired, then throw out a great limb, then grow on a few more years, and throw out a great sprawling limb in another direction, and so on, helter-skelter, hap hazard, until they reach, perhaps, two hundred feet; and then Mother Nature looks upon her overgrown, misshapen, productions, grows ashamed or pitiful for them, and clothes them in a garment of velvet moss golden and green, which with its exquisite form and coloring amply compensates for all the ugliness.

Oh, but they are weird looking things and we walk among them as in an enchanted forest.

In a spot where the trees are a little smaller or more regular, the ground has been cleared and leveled, a preacher's stand erected, and a few substantial seats, with comfortable backs to them, and circling round the outside a dozen rough but comfortable board cabins. Here for a few days in every Summer, gather the people of all parts of the bay, to worship God in their own simple and earnest way. The scene suggests to our minds Bryant's grand Forest Hymn, commencing with "The groves were God's first temples."

The place is now lonely enough, and so we pass on toward the shore of the bay, stopping by the way to measure the trunk of one of these gigantic trees. I take off my scarf, and, reaching on high as I can, find that it takes five times the length to reach round it, and, according to my arithmetic, the diameter is about fifteen feet. Another short walk and we reach the cliff that gives us a view of the southern and western part of the bay. Oysterville, the county seat, lies to the southwest, a little further, the outside world. To the west that low, sandy peninsula Yoke Point, with its lonely lighthouse. The wind is high and the tide is up, and the waves washing the beach below, breaking their crests in white on the numberless rocks, and on the bar that separates the river from the sea. The vast woods of Inkster and the mighty ocean face it, with solemn and full tones, with eyes, the gulls, we retreat to our home, when the twilight begins to deepen and evening fires are again lighting up rooms as that far off light by the lighthouse, and we in bed and guess at the gleaming or blazing fires, and go to sleep.

And dream that those logs stumps and trees are all covered with a great, dark, burning, roaring, smoking night called Bay Center.