William Stanek's Olympic
A Literary Field Guide to Olympic National Park

Olympic refuses to become one landscape. Mountains rise above Port Angeles. Rivers leave those mountains and enter forests. Rain forests gather water into moss, root, and stream. Roads end at beaches where the Pacific sets the day's terms. The places belong together even when the roads do not. William Stanek's Olympic helps readers understand that separation. It moves through the peninsula as a series of living travel worlds-high ridges, restored rivers, mountain lakes, temperate rain forests, wild coast, forest corridors, and quieter waters-while protecting the bodily and logistical truths that make Olympic different from a compact park. The result is a literary field guide about connection, distance, weather, tide, road, water, and choice. For first-time visitors, families, couples, solo travelers, photographers, walkers, and return travelers, this is Olympic without the checklist: generous, changeable, geographically honest, and best experienced by letting one world own the day.