Today’s Featured Hike: The Niblicks Loop, Port Ludlow

Moments can be difficult to freeze in time.  Photos attempt to lock a memory in place, but they fail miserably.  Selfies are a prime example of the failure to capture the true essence of a moment.  The picture cannot record the heat of the sun’s radiation on the faces, the movement and sound of the leaves in the background as a light zephyr sets them dancing, the harmonious babbling of the creek to the side, and the overpowering aroma of skunk cabbage growing on its verge.  All that is lost when the shutter opens and closes in 1/250^th of a second.

Doesn’t matter.  I’m still going to show you pictures of the Niblicks Loop Trail.  Your part… is to let your imagination run free.  Close your eyes and listen to the wind as it winds its way through the branches of the trees. Feel its tender fingers caressing your face.  Immerse yourself into the riotous greenness of the trees, bushes and grass.  Imagine your feet moving upon the spongy, earthy loam of the trail.  Insert the songs and calls of multiple avian species, and the hums, buzzing and clicking of insects.

The Loop trail can be hiked in two different ways. The more normal route runs counterclockwise, starting on woodsy trails for 1.5 miles, skirting the golf course and ending up at the club office and restaurant at mile 2.5 Or, my preference, it can be hiked in the clockwise manner starting at the Golf Club, skirting the course and ending up doing the wilder, woodsy parts last. Wild to manicured, manicured to wild, your choice…

At the time of this hike on the 5th of May, the beginning at the club is stunning with rhododendrons of every color in bloom surrounding the verdant, wooded greens of the course. Many of the forest trees and shrubs encountered throughout the hike are flowering as well…

Direct contact with the golf course is very limited and mostly occurs at the beginning, or end if that is your druther. The pathway as designed never puts the hiker in confict with those enjoying their day on the links, and quickly changes to carpets of green grass with intermingled wildflowers. Cedar plank bridges provide dry passage over the many creeks that flow in the area.

The trails vary between grassy and loamy, open or weaving through dense forest tunnels.

And there are other interesting sights along the way… Giant stacked stumps, nurse stumps, rock signs,

Magnificent trees… and a bat house

There will be salmon and blackberries later in the summer…

Walk slowly. Stop often. Listen. Watch. Engage each moment as it is presented before you. Immerse. Learn.