PORT ANGELES — Mick Dodge dances to sweet “sole” music in the Hoh River Valley, and Roger Oakes wants to keep the melody playing.
Dodge, whose barefoot exploits in the rain forest have made him a reality television star on the National Geographic Channel, and Oakes, a board member of the Hoh River Trust, addressed the Port Angeles Business Association on Tuesday.
Dodge posed shoeless for photos for $25 donations to the trust after regaling his two-dozen listeners in Joshua’s Restaurant, 113 DelGuzzi Drive, about how he’d come to connect with nature through the bottoms of his feet.
“Tapping back into that authentic story, the Hoh became like a teacher to me,” Dodge said.
Oakes stressed how the nonprofit trust allows recreational access to the river corridor it has preserved in conservation easements that run from the border of Olympic National Park in Jefferson County to where the Hoh joins the ocean.
The trust also conducts limited thinning on 3,300 of the 7,000 acres of timber and bottom land it owns in the corridor.
It has opened 30 miles of side streams for migrating fish, dug out 22 culverts, and built five bridges, according to Oakes.
Donations, plus some money from the limited logging that creates habitat for elk and other wildlife, support the trust, he said.
“We’re interested in maintaining our independence,” he said.
Maple poaching
The biggest problem with public access, Oakes said, is maple poaching, but not to the point where the trust will consider closing the corridor.
“You’re allowed to go out onto it, camp on it, launch your boat out on it,” Oakes said. Hunting and fishing also are permitted.
Dodge downplayed his dramatized exploits on the National Geographic Channel’s “The Legend of Mick Dodge” in favor of informing viewers about the wonders of the North Olympic Peninsula.
To get the most out of walking the wilderness, they should step out of their shoes — as did several listeners who posed with him for pictures.
He strives to walk a route between humility and honor, Dodge said.
“It’s time to find that middle path,” he said, “and the way to find that is to get out and start walking that land, get rid of that polarization
“It’s time to take that talk and go out for a walk. I am talking about physically going out and walking your talk.”
For more information about the Hoh River Trust, visit www.hohrivertrust.org.
For more about Dodge’s show, visit http://tinyurl.com/PDN-legendofmickdodge.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
