Olympic National Park may be the most diverse of our National Parks. It's composed of four separate ecosystems, including the Pacific coastline, alpine areas to the north, temperate rainforest to the west, and the forests of the drier east areas. Because of its biological diversity, scientists have declared the entire park a biological reserve, which really means it gets double the protection from government with quadruple the fun in its four separate ecosystems – why they didn't call it Spearmint Gum Park is beyond me, though that's probably something Spearmint's marketing team should look into. It is also because of this biodiversity that the park boasts a huge variety of plants and animals, some, including the Olympic Marmot, Piper's bellflower and Flett's violet, are endemic to the park itself.
As if it's diversity weren't enough to attract you to the park, Olympic is also one of the wildest, healthiest stretches of land in the lower 48. This fact is suggested by the heavy presence of moss throughout the park. Moss typically acts as a good bio-indicator of a healthy ecosystem. It survives by sucking nutrients directly from the ground and air through its leaves. Because of this, moss is much more sensitive to ecological changes than rooted plants, making its rising or declining health a fairly accurate predictor of the future health of an ecosystem. But wait, there's more! The damp, nutrient-rich clumps in which moss grows provide the ideal habitat for many plant and animal species to thrive (see flowers in picture above). Numerous seeds depend on the abundance of nutrients within the moss clumps to spore, while the reach of the clumps protect the land from wind and rain erosion while also providing a nice protective layer to hide smaller animals like spiders and rodents from predators.
My journey into this land of biodiversity was limited to the north-eastern alpine areas, which you'll see in the photographs from this gallery. Damp, shaded, and vibrant with color, Moss was everywhere. Plants grew from within the moss clumps, and insects slipped in and out if their openings. Entire landscapes seemed to be covered by it. This led to subsequent research of moss, and through this research I was inspired to name this site Mossy Wander. Having Moss as a last name certainly didn't hurt the cause, either.