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Mima Mounds

28 January 2023 • 5.7 km / 3.5 mi (map)

  • Added to Eric Scouten :: Travel on 5 February 2023
  • Washington 75

A short drive south of Olympia, Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve presents a most unusual landscape. Hundreds of small mounds of dirt, some as tall as a person make an oddly undulating grassland. Scientists have studied this landscape for nearly two centuries and have yet to agree on a convincing theory for how or why they were formed.

Rather than speculate on this myself, I’ll share the story as told by the Upper Chehalis Tribe, the First Peoples of the area:

Thrush was a disgrace to the tribe: the people had noticed, for many years, that she would not wash her face or bathe; she would not go near the water … “My friends,” Thrush would say, “if I should wash my face, something might happen to this earth.” One day at last she consented to wash her face. Clouds started to form immediately. It rained and rained. The whole world was flooded. There was nothing but prairie land beneath the water. At last the water fell (near Mima Prairie). The earth still remains in the shape of waves.

A gravel path winds through an open prairie of dry, reddish-brown grasses and rust-colored ferns under an overcast, rippled gray sky, with a line of evergreen trees along the distant horizon.
A bare, leafless tree stands alone on a rolling field of dry golden grass, with a small green conifer nearby, beneath a heavy overcast sky. Low mist drifts over a distant line of evergreen forest and hills.
A close-up view of the ground at Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, covered in a mosaic of pale gray-white reindeer lichen clumps and bright green moss, interspersed with dry brown grass stems.
A rolling prairie of dormant golden-brown grasses dotted with pale tufts of reindeer lichen and patches of green moss, with the gentle mounded terrain leading to a distant line of evergreen trees under a heavy overcast gray sky.
A rolling grassland prairie with tufted brown and green grasses and low shrubs under a heavy, overcast gray sky. In the distance, a line of evergreen trees marks the edge of the field, with a few farm buildings and rooftops nestled among tall firs on the left.
A gravel path winds through a wide prairie of dry, tawny grasses dotted with patches of green moss and low leafless shrubs at Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, with a dark line of evergreen trees along the horizon under a heavy overcast gray sky.
A gently mounded prairie of dry golden grass dotted with pale green clumps of reindeer lichen and rust-brown ferns, under a heavy overcast sky. Bare shrubs and a low line of evergreen and deciduous trees mark the horizon.
A large old tree with a thick, moss- and lichen-covered trunk and low spreading branches stands in a conifer forest under an overcast winter sky. In the foreground, fallen mossy branches lie across a grassy hillside dotted with small evergreen saplings and dry brush.
A mossy, mounded prairie clearing dotted with tall Douglas fir trunks and bare deciduous saplings under a heavy gray overcast sky, with dead ferns and twigs on the moss-covered ground and a distant treeline beyond golden dry grass.
A stand of tall conifer trees with lichen-mottled trunks rising from a mossy forest floor, with a long moss-covered fallen log and scattered branches lying across the green undergrowth on an overcast winter day.
The moss-covered base of a large conifer tree with clumps of vivid green moss and pale gray lichen clinging to the trunk and spreading across the forest floor around it, set in a damp evergreen woodland with fallen branches and undergrowth.
A faint dirt footpath winds through grassy ground between tall moss-flecked evergreen conifers, opening onto a pale, misty meadow beyond the trees under an overcast winter sky.

Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, southwest of Olympia, Washington · 5.7 km / 3.5 mi
(Mouse over or tap on the markers to see the photos there. Use the button to adjust the map’s position and zoom.)

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