PORT ANGELES — Inside the cabin, flush against the window, a hummingbird tried to escape. Wings and body whirring against the glass, it sought the sunlight outside. But this window, of the restored 125-year-old Beaumont Cabin, is not one that opens.
Courtney Wilson and Stefanie Colliton, two caretakers of the cabin, looked for a way to guide the hummingbird out. First, Wilson held up a white dishcloth, one of the cabin’s few articles, and got the bird to alight on it. But it was far too frightened, apparently, to stay perched as she drew the dishcloth toward the door.
Colliton, meanwhile, stood back, motionless. Both women were calm and focused on the hummingbird; Colliton handed Wilson another white dishcloth, which she used to ever-so-gently wrap the bird.
Wilson brought the 3-gram creature to the wide-open door, stepped outside and lifted the cloths. In a flash, the hummingbird vanished into the sky.
It was a fitting end to an afternoon’s conversation about the Beaumont Cabin. Wilson and Colliton reopened the little log home outside the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road, this past spring, opening the door to a piece of Port Angeles history. The day they first welcomed the public — Junior Ranger Day in April — they greeted a flock of visitors. And people are still coming, eager to look inside the life of a homesteader in the far Pacific Northwest.
Now, Colliton and Wilson are getting ready to graduate from Port Angeles High School. They’re counting the days till the June 14 commencement exercises. Neither student is dying to get out of her home town, though.
One of the more rewarding aspects of their high school career came via the Natural Resources courses at the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center.
These are science classes that happen outdoors in the real, natural world: Students work with Olympic National Park staff, the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, the Arthur D. Feiro Marine Life Center on City Pier and other local organizations — going deep into the woods, wading in rivers and walking windswept beaches.
The Beaumont Cabin, now a part of Olympic National Park, piqued Wilson and Colliton’s interest right away. The one-room dwelling was the homestead of Elliott and Sarah Beaumont in the last decade of the 19th century, and it was just sitting, shut, outside the park visitor center.
The cabin was donated to the Clallam County Historical Society in 1962, and then moved down Mount Angeles Road to its new spot. Over the next 40 years, volunteers would work on the log structure, whitewashing the interior, re-caulking the logs and putting period-faithful furnishings inside.
But in 2011, with no one to see to its upkeep, the Beaumont Cabin was closed.
It did not smell pretty when Colliton and Wilson first opened its front door back in January. But the two got to work researching the Beaumonts’ time here. They took care to arrange the cabin’s artifacts as they were when Elliott, Sarah and their daughter Alida shared the space.
There are in fact four “rooms,” Wilson and Colliton point out: the kitchen where dishes and clothes are scrubbed by hand; the dining room beside it; the bathroom with its chamber pot, and the bedroom. It’s just that there aren’t any walls.
Wilson is impressed by how close the Beaumonts were, for all the years they lived here. Elliott lived to be 70, and was known for his love of “the out-of-doors,” as his March 22, 1916, obituary said.
“He extended a hospitable greeting to all who passed his home on Mount Angeles Way . . . Many friends and acquaintances will recall with pleasure the little visits they had with him and his equally interesting wife, while resting beneath the shade of one of his friendly old trees and quenching their thirst from the cool waters of the spring.”
All of this, at the turn of the 20th century, was “far from the city’s maddening throng.”
The Beaumonts had trees and a spring, but no electricity, no toilet and no bathtub, or at least not one the size of today’s tubs. They used a wash basin to clean their clothes, dishes and selves.
For Sarah, “a great reader and something of a writer, time never dragged . . . her thoughtful husband was never too busy to stop at a friend’s and pack home to her quantities of reading matter,” according to Elliott’s obituary.
As they learned about the human history of this place, Wilson and Colliton reflected on their own lives. With so much technology, “we’re overcomplicated,” said Wilson.
Yet “people complain about having to do laundry . . . and about being bored,” added Colliton.
We’re so dependent on so many appliances, she believes. “People lose sight of who they really are.”
Colliton was born in Yakima; her father died when she was just 2. She and her mother, Sheila Eastwood, moved to Port Angeles a couple of years later.
“I love this town,” Colliton said. “I like the close-knitness,” even if it can get annoying sometimes since “everybody knows everybody.”
Wilson also feels that quality of life here is high. By comparison, “Seattle is claustrophobic. There aren’t enough trees,” she said.
Yet she also knows the struggles of the local economy. Wilson is saddened by the closures of local businesses such as Star Video, which after 21 years is slated to shut its doors today.
For these young women, though, the natural wonders of the Peninsula continue to enchant. Wilson lists Lake Crescent and Hurricane Ridge among her favorite places on the planet. While a student in the Natural Resources Options course at the Skills Center, she began volunteering at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center in Port Angeles.
“She connected with the staff and place so much that she applied for and was accepted as an intern there,” said Natural Resources program instructor Dan Lieberman. “She now takes on basically the full responsibilities of an employee.”
Ranger and Visitor Center supervisor Greg Marsh has several times given Lieberman feedback: Wilson handles her job like a professional.
And the Beaumont Cabin “has totally come to life thanks to these students,” Marsh said of Wilson and Colliton.
Together, they show the curious — from Germany and Japan to Joyce and Port Townsend — the cabin in the visitor center’s backyard.
In her work at the center, Wilson is still a volunteer, though with a perk that will come after she finishes her 300-hour internship this summer: a $1,200 AmeriCorps scholarship.
Wilson intends to put this toward tuition at Peninsula College, where she’ll go for two years before transferring to a university to study biology — and sign language. Her dream is to become a marine biologist, and she has learned of studies involving sign language with dolphins.
In addition to her internship and school work, Wilson is a track and field athlete; her events are the discus, shot put and javelin. One weekend in May, she went to a meet in Bremerton on Saturday and worked 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the park visitor center.
Colliton, for her part, is working toward her own AmeriCorps scholarship. She is a student guide for the Natural Resources program, editor of the program’s newsletter Terra Cognita, and a contributor to other environmental newsletters across the region. She’s already worked with poet and nature writer Tim McNulty on an essay, “Go Fish! Elwha Salmon Are Able to Strive Once Again,” for the Olympic Park Associates publication Voice of the Wild Olympics.
Her research on the Elwha dams’ removal opened up a multifaceted period of history, both natural and cultural. Colliton learned about the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s deep connections to the river, and about how the returning salmon represent tribal people’s hopes for their grandchildren.
Colliton and Wilson likewise feel connected to this place. They both turned 18 in April, and joke that they have been friends so long that they are attached at the hip.
But their futures are, of course, uncertain. When asked what city she’d choose if she could live anywhere, Wilson replied that it would be any place she could get a job as a marine biologist.
Colliton likewise imagines that she will have to leave Port Angeles to develop her career. For now, though, she hopes to become the Natural Resources program mentor. In this position, she would work, as a volunteer, with high school students in various courses at the Skills Center. Colliton says she comes from a “trade-school family” and is not in a rush to get through college.
At the same time, she hopes to see the Natural Resources mentor job be turned into a staff position. Paid or not, Colliton said, “I really want to help out the Natural Resources program.”
