Beautiful Places: Mt. Rainier National Park

If my love affair with the Pacific Northwest was launched by a specific event, I can't remember what it was. It might have been a ferry ride, a whale-watching tour or a particularly gooey-sweet pastry. I don't remember not loving the region. I've spent some of the most enjoyable weeks of my life between the coziness of downtown Portland and the stark beauty of British Columbia's Desolation Sound.

One of the best parts of the Pacific Northwest, whether your definition includes Northern California and Alaska or not, is its national parks. And Mt. Rainier National Park - just a couple hours' drive from Seattle - is one of my favorites.

With its peak reaching 14,410 feet above sea level, Mt. Rainier dominates views from throughout the area on sunny days - I've seen it from an eastbound ferry leaving the Olympic Peninsula, for half an hour prior to landing in a plane headed into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, on runs between Lake Sammamish and the Issaquah Alps, from Lake Union in the heart of Seattle and from a bridge around mile 19 of the Rock 'n' Roll Seattle marathon. But I've also been in the park, staring straight at the mountain, and seen nothing at all - like at Denali in Alaska, the cloud cover can be impossibly thick.

But Mt. Rainier is far from being the only attraction at the park that bears its name. Mt. Rainier National Park covers 368 square miles of land, lake and mountain, with more than 260 miles of trails. You can go from sweating at the park entrance to staring at snowbanks outside the Paradise Visitor Center an hour later. You'll see marmots and pika, hummingbirds and northern spotted owls, shaggy mountain goats, timid black-tailed dear, black bears, elk and various species of salmon. You might find views of fields of wildflowers in brilliant bloom, or of the icy blue heart of one of the park's 25 named glaciers.

Spending time at Mt. Rainier is a sort of live-action Choose Your Own Adventure book. You can eat a picnic lunch at White River Campground and picnic area or browse through the Longmire Museum or one of the three visitor centers. You can take a short, easy walk above the tree line on the Nisqually Vista Trail (named for its views of Nisqually Glacier) or under the shade of enormous old-growth cedars and Douglas Fir at Grove of the Patriarchs (with the bonus of beautiful views of the Ohanapecosh River, particularly from the trail's short suspension bridge). You can join the crowds of cyclists pedaling their way up to Sunrise (if you pick that one, though, I'll meet you at the top, ready to pour water and Gatorade down your throat when you collapse outside the visitor center) or over to Mowich Lake. You can trek to Glacier Basin and back in a day or take the challenge of backpacking the 93-mile Wonderland Trail (the National Park Service recommends a minimum of 10-14 days - longer, with snow or bad weather) around Mt. Rainier itself. Whatever your preferences, the park can keep you busy for as much time as you have to spend there.

For those unfamiliar with our national parks, Rainier is a great place to start getting acquainted with them. I've been hiking and camping in national parks throughout the country since I was in the womb, and this one has been in my top four since my first visit at the age of eight or nine (it has a great Junior Ranger program that will have your kids lecturing you on wildlife and scolding you if you set a toe off a marked pathway or trail). It's breathtakingly beautiful, home to an enormous number of species of flora and fauna and its staff is genuinely concerned with finding the balance between helping visitors discover all that the park has to offer and protecting its delicate ecosystems.

If you ever find yourself in the Seattle area, your visit won't be complete without at least a day trip to Mt. Rainier National Park.

For more information on Mt. Rainier National Park, visit the National Park Service's official site: http://www.nps.gov/mora/. All photos taken by and property of J. Pinneo.

Beautiful Places: NoVA

I was 16 the first time I came to the mid-Atlantic, headed to Georgetown for three weeks as a Junior Statesman of America. Flying into Virginia's Dulles International Airport in early July, I remember thinking "It's so green!" For a teenager who has grown up surrounded by sand and palm trees, and whose concept of natural beauty is based on the mountainous landscapes of Montana, Northern California and Vancouver Island, a mostly flat, green, deciduous forest is fascinating to look at, but not particularly pretty.

I thought downtown Washington was beautiful, with its white marble and broad avenues; I liked the look and feel of the brick in Georgetown and its narrow, tree-lined streets. But looking out my dorm room window at the river and Northern Virginia on the other side just made me think about how uncomfortable I was every time I walked out into the sauna that is summer in the mid-Atlantic.

The Potomac looked the way the air felt: like very soggy mud you'd want to avoid whenever possible and wash off immediately if it happened to come in contact with your skin. The leafy cover provided by the trees reminded me that if I stood under any of them for more than 30 seconds, at least three of the five gazillion mosquitoes who love the area's shaded, damp scenery would inevitably find me and launch an attack.

When I came back to the area two years later for college, not much had changed. The Potomac was slightly less brown, and I did enjoy being able to watch the seasons change, but I still didn't see any innate beauty in the landscape. (With the exception of fall colors. "The leaves are changing color! On that tree, and that one over there, and...all of them! Look!" was pretty much my standard line every time I walked out the door in October, and my dorm mates from cooler climates spent the month laughing at me.) In the six years since, a love of the region has snuck up on me.

I lived in Alexandria my first year out of college, in a decent-enough one bedroom, the one thing about which I absolutely loved was the view. Most of the outside wall in my living/dining room was window, and overlooked the forested rolling hills between Alexandria and Mount Vernon. I didn't pay much attention in the summer, but once the leaves started to change, I would stand at the window and just look every day.

When I started running on the Mt. Vernon Trail, I regularly jumped at birds singing in or flying out of bushes practically at my elbow as I passed. And at the rustling of some small creature in the underbrush. And at the awful, sticky feeling when I was the first person through some of the morning's spiderwebs. My pace slowed by a good 15 seconds per mile on the stretches of trail that paralleled the river, as I watched the herons and ducks come and go and the occasional fish briefly break the surface with a splash.

I still approach potential spiderweb hotspots with caution, but I've stopped jumping at every other manifestation of the region's native species in my path in favor of appreciating them: on long runs, my first moment of levity in the morning comes from the bullfrog chorus I pass heading south; I gauge the progress of the season by the height of the cattails in a marshy Potomac tributary; I know where to look for ducklings to coo over in early summer.

Lately, I've begun to find even the morning haziness that's an omnipresent indicator of humidity in July and August beautiful (even if the humidity that causes it is still completely, disgustingly, damply uncomfortable). It adds a dreamlike sheen to the landscape and makes things like the doe and her fawn playing in a meadow between the river and the US-1/395 bridge this morning feel a little like reality has momentarily bumped up against a fairy tale. Northern Virginia will likely never be the first thing that comes to mind when I think of beautiful places, but it has a lush, green-and-pastel appeal that epitomizes all the best parts of Virginia charm, and makes you wonder if its roots might be in the landscape itself.