MONROE — Her feet still ache although her blisters have healed, and Sallie “Spirit” Harrison says she is proud of each of the 196.5 miles she walked along U.S. Highway 101.
The woman, 59, walked from Port Townsend to Lake Quinault to dramatize her protest of the Navy’s plan to fly electronic warfare training missions over Olympic National Park.
“I didn’t meet anybody who really thinks it is a good idea to amplify war training in this part of the country,” she said Saturday from her home in the Cascade foothills east of Everett. “It didn’t make sense to anyone.”
Harrison ended her journey June 27, having accepted rides only on the highway’s twisting route around Lake Crescent and a lonely stretch along the Quinault Reservation.
Some days she managed to walk six miles in the morning and another six miles in the afternoon; others, she walked far less.
She slipped out of contact for a time after losing her cellphone charger near Lake Crescent, one of what she joked were “Sallie’s droppings.”
But for all the miles, she had one word for her feelings: “Grateful.”
She said she was buoyed by the hundreds of people with whom she talked and asked why they loved the Olympic Mountains.
“It’s a unique place,” said Harrison said, who besides her Snohomish County home owns Olympic Peninsula property up the Dosewallips River with her husband.
“People make their living from forestry and fisheries and nature and the park,” she said of the residents who sometimes feel forgotten the rest of the state.
“People feel very much at risk.”
The Navy wants to fly EA-6 Growler aircraft from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island across the Olympic Peninsula, over the Pacific Ocean and back for training flights.
The crews would target electromagnetic radiation from emitters atop as many as three camper-sized vehicles that would move from site to site.
A flood of public comments has pushed back the Navy’s target date for the project from September to early 2016.
Protests against the Navy plan have continued, with Peter Goldmark, state commissioner of public lands, saying the Department of Natural Resources wasn’t interested in providing sites for the Navy testing.
The U.S. Forest Service will weigh in on the proposal early next year.
Harrison said her attitudes had been honed during Vietnam war protests she joined as a teenager living south of Seattle.
“Do we have control over our military or no?” she asked. “Who pays the bills?”
She said the country had drifted back to a culture that accepts war as a solution to world affairs.
“It’s a mindset that’s disastrous, and it’s up to the people to correct,” she said.
Harrison set off on her trek from the Keystone ferry from Whidbey Island on June 1 and reached the South Shore of Lake Quinault 26 days later.
A musician and songwriter, she stopped for performances outside the Sequim and Port Angeles farmers markets.
Her journey ended at the lake with Quinault singer Harvest Moon singing a tribal welcome song.
Harrison said she’d written 15 new songs en route that she hopes to post to her Facebook page, Sallie’s Walk for the Olympics.
For one song, “The Olympics Are Our Home,” she said she wrote five verses in a single stretch of walking.
“I thought, ‘Whoa, I have to slow down.’ That’s kind of my favorite one.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
