June 26, 2009, 2:17 pm
The book is not what you might dread.
Olympic National Park: A Natural History by Sequim poet and nature writer Tim McNulty delves into global warming and an ecosystem filled with fragile life forms, but it is far from a dry, dreary tome.
No, the book -- a sweeping update of the original McNulty released in 1996 -- is loaded with drama.
He'll give a reading from Olympic at 7 p.m. Friday at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.
McNulty, who discovered the Olympic Mountains some 40 summers ago, writes like he's just come down from a backpacking trip that took him from Blue Mountain to Klahhane Ridge to Lake Crescent to the Hoh River to Shi Shi Beach.
He takes his readers into the skies to behold resurgent bald eagles, then it's into the back country to come face to face with Roosevelt elk, black bears, cougars and those silken-furred, cat-size fishers reintroduced just last year.
He writes of the Elwha River's 100-pound salmon, harlequin ducks that "look like they've been painted by tribal fetishists," the old-growth forest community of owls, flying squirrels and truffles -- and "unbridled resource exploitation" across the wilderness.
