Hood Canal: Adventure gives Mom a memory

My family and friends will attest to my hedonistic breakfast-in-bed tendencies, but an adventure takes precedence over pampering any day. Last year, I abandoned coffee in bed on a bright Mother's Day morning, and my husband, young daughter and I set out in quest of Guillemot Cove on Hood Canal.

The sound of it was treasure-map enough to whet our appetites, and there was no turning back once we read about the "stump house" that a convict once used as a hideout.

A ferry ride established the right tone for our excursion, and from our landing in Southworth we headed to Port Orchard for breakfast. We found a diner with a waitress from another era who forever won my daughter's heart by producing a hot chocolate with more whipped cream than cocoa.

Fueled by hash browns and ketchup, we headed north past Bremerton and wound west to our destination. We found the trailhead and started off into layers of forest cascading with spring greens. The path led through large clumps of sword fern, maples caped in moss and licorice fern, and remnant stumps feeding new growth.

On a branch above the trail we surprised a red Douglas squirrel carrying a mouthful of moss — we watched as she added this to a cushioned nest taking shape a few feet away. Native rhododendrons sent pink clusters arching over our heads, and the large white blooms of thimbleberry promised later sweetness.

We took a right at the Sawmill Trail, our hopes of finding the fabled tree home renewed by this pathway's promising name. The striped flowers of miner's lettuce competed for light with trailing native blackberry at our feet, while the canopy above echoed with the music of Swainson's thrushes and Townsend's warblers just returned from southern vacations. Fueled by fantasies of hidden outlaws, we explored each misleading spur for the infamous stump, imagining doorways in every widened trunk.

Another sign indicated our path became Margaret Trail, and soon the scent of evergreen huckleberry (try sucking the honeylike juice from the white, lantern-shape blossoms) gave way to saltwater. A steep slope switch-backed to a rocky shore glimpsed through young evergreens and madrona. At the bottom of the hill, we wound past a weather-beaten cabin (still no stump) and came out in a grassy road that led over a bridge to the beach.

The snowy Brothers in the Olympic Range capped off a watercolor view of a cattail marsh that fed into Hood Canal. Temporarily distracted from our goal by the long oyster shell-strewn beach, we combed the beach for geologic and marine treasures. The next hour was devoted to drift-log balance beams, mermaid gardens, shell museum displays, and mucky wading (quicksand, to our minds) among tiny shore crabs.

We ate our lunch while entertained by a deer struggling with sinking hooves in the silty tidelands. A family of red-breasted mergansers explored the shallows — their red eyes and bright-orange beaks uncommon flashes of color, as two kingfishers did a diving dance overhead.

Our hunger sated, we again thought of the fugitive's den — did the stump house really exist? We headed back toward the bridge, where a small but promising trail ambled to the right. Several large remnant cedars looked likely, but held no secrets, only new trees of impressive girth, roots octopusing down to the ground.

We ended up in a large meadow where my daughter caught a red-striped garter snake and we found a sign that read "Stumphouse Trail." Galloping over a bridge a troll would love, we hurried along a path lined with devil's club bristling with thorny evidence of its name — perfect protection, we noted, for a man on the run. Arriving in a clearing dominated by an ancient maple tree, we found it!

The storybook house literally grew out of the forest floor, with cedar-shake roof and screened windows. We carefully approached; tales of the notorious convict making us wary. Cautiously, we opened the door to a dark and dank interior. So this was the spot.

A charred interior and strategic peek holes silently spoke the stuff of legend. A high bunk, rusty coffee can, and a stained coffee mug indicated prior use, but thankfully the space was currently uninhabited. We took turns hiding out and poked around inside and outside, celebrating as if we alone had discovered the house.

Our quest complete, we stopped to celebrate with ice-cream bars in Seabeck. Finding that house together made for a memorable Mother's Day, and I'm requesting another gift of adventure this year. We can leave right after my foot massage.

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