Jesse

and a two-way radio for communication with the ranger station in the valley.

No internet, no cell service.

The nearest person was a trail crew camp about eight miles south by trail, and they were only there intermittently.

The nearest town was Amanda Park, 35 miles by road.

I settled in.

The work was easy.

check the repeaters every morning and evening log the readings run a test signal twice a day report any malfunctions to dispatch the rest of the time was mine i read i hiked the ridge i watched the elk herds move through the meadows below the station

I listen to the rain, which fell almost every day on the west side of the Olympics, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.

I want to talk about the rain because it's relevant.

The Olympic Peninsula's west side is a temperate rainforest.

It gets over 12 feet of precipitation a year.

The forest at lower elevations is dense and green and dripping, hung with moss and ferns and lichens, the canopy so thick that the forest floor exists in a kind of permanent twilight even at midday.

Sound behaves differently in that environment.

The rain dampens everything.

Footsteps on the forest floor are nearly silent because the ground is afoot of saturated duff and moss.

You can be ten feet from a Roosevelt elk and not hear it move.

The rain creates a constant white noise that masks smaller sounds.

You learn to listen through it, the way you learn to see through fog.

I was good at listening.

By the end of my first month, I could distinguish the sound of a branch falling from the sound of an animal stepping on a branch.