"Green" tourism?

 If you ignore the news for your mental sanity like I tend to do, you may not know that the western U.S. is in one of the worst droughts in modern history and may be on the precipice of what meteorologists can a mega drought. Over 82% of the west - including Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and California - is currently classified as being in either severe, extreme, or exceptional drought. Record low rainfall in 2020 and 2021, along with the hottest summer on record in 2020 (after a cool start, 2021 is now vying for the dubious title) has created dangerous conditions for wildfire as well as water shortages for fish, farms, rangelands, and communities. 

Along the central California coast where we live, our annual average rainfall total should be somewhere around 50 inches per year. Over the last two years combined, we have received 70% of that; 16 inches in 2020 and 17 inches in 2021. Between the drought and the CZU Complex Fire burning nearly 87,000 acres of our forests last summer, everything looks and feels a tad bit parched here. 

This is not a rare color for the hills of California in the summer,

but there is usually a couple months of green in the early spring; 

that green period lasted about two weeks this year.

One of the many burned areas near our house

Enter "green tourism." In early June, I spent a few days in Oregon, prior to their record-breaking heatwave last week, and little did I know that seeing the color green would be one of the trip highlights. Pete was doing work on the Columbia River, so I met him at the end of his work trip and spent a few days in and around Astoria, Oregon. Astoria is in the northwestern corner of Oregon, bordered on the north by the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean on the west. I spent a fair amount of time in the area when I lived in Oregon either for work or salmon fishing, so I had a bit of nostalgia as we explored.

Wreck of the Peter Iredale at Fort Stevens - I used to 

collect water samples just up the beach from this

green dune grasses against the gray of the beach

North Head lighthouse at Cape Disappointment

Astoria bridge across the Columbia River, connecting Oregon to Washington 

And glorious day, it rained! That would probably be a bummer for most people's vacation, and I admit that I was a bit sad when I saw the forecast, but it was so refreshing. We donned our raincoats and opened our umbrellas and spent much of a day walking through the neighborhoods of Astoria in the rain. With rain comes green. It is one of the things I miss most about Oregon. That might sound odd if you have never spent time in a temperate rain forest, but the vibrancy and shades of green are amazing. I also spent a lot of time in my formative years running on trails in Oregon forests, so they feel like home to me. I've lived in California for nearly four times the amount of time I lived in Oregon and have spent much more time in the redwood forests here, but they do not inspire the same feeling of "home" as a Pacific Northwest forest. 

lovely bog (and mosquito breeding factory)

greenery growing amongst the shallow roots of a sitka spruce

dense, green understory - something lacking in redwood forests

a light colored banana slug on a carpet of moss

The outlook for California does not look promising based on the latest climate models, so we may be traveling north more frequently in years to come to engage in this type of "green" tourism to feel rain and see green.