The Olympic Peninsula, in the distant northwest of mainland United States, is home to two gods. It's a fitting home, too; there is a Mount Olympus in the centre. Some 5,000ft up on Hurricane Ridge, north of Port Angeles, you look inland over miles of alpine meadows and distant icy peaks. To the north there is the ocean, with miles-long fingers of cloud drifting over the riverbeds and through the valleys. Where they hang, dark, mystical rainforests have formed over the centuries, hills and valleys of pines, hemlock and spruce (some ancient and many hundreds of feet high), creepers, strange sounds, stranger legends.
Back to our two gods. The first lived in a small logging town called Aberdeen in the south of the peninsula. His parents were all too mortal: there was divorce and domestic abuse, trouble at home and school. His godlike-ness was only revealed when he picked up a guitar and created a group with the suitably heavenly name of Nirvana. But those whom the gods love die young. He took his life and ascended to rock'n'roll Valhalla in 1993. The name of this legend was Kurt Cobain.
The second god is immortal — currently 109 years old and living 100 miles north of Aberdeen, outside another logging town called Forks. He can read minds, run up and down trees like a sprinter and stop cars with his bare hands. He has a skin that sparkles with diamonds and he is impossibly beautiful. And as gods sometimes do, he has fallen in love with a mortal girl, which causes all kinds of problems. His name is Edward Cullen, a vampire, and he is the hero of the Twilight novels and films.
So in this epic and properly Olympian setting we have two gods and two ordinary little towns, Aberdeen and Forks. Both places have suffered badly from the recession. Aberdeen continues to do so, making little money from the teenage pilgrims who venture to the town. Forks, however, is a municipality transformed because of Edward.
Forks is the wettest town in the dampest state. That's why Twilight author Stephenie Meyer chose it: as everyone knows, vampires have to be careful in sunlight, so Arizona, her home state (and that of the series' heroine, Bella) wouldn't have done at all.
It is an extraordinary place, meteorologically as well as geographically. I drove west from heatwave USA. They were flopping in Florida, steaming in New York and roasting on the plains. Even Seattle was quite warm. Then, as I left the ferry to Edmonds and headed west into the peninsula, the mists began to creep around the car. I was driving a bright red Volvo XC60. 'Your pretty car sure will stand out in Forks,' said Diane Schostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau, with a chuckle. It was meant to. Edward Cullen drives an XC60 in the second Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn. Meyer chose Volvos because her brother told her they were the kind of sexy but strong and secure European cars the Cullens would drive.
As the mist thickened, strange happenings began to occur. By the turning for Sol Duc Hot Springs, a young couple suddenly darted across the deserted highway. There was a road sign: Forks 26, Port Angeles 30. They took photographs and dashed back into their vehicle. The scene was repeated as we entered Forks itself. Here there were one, two, three cars parked by the road sign. All around the sign there were teenage girls shrieking, oh-my-God-ing, being photographed in various stages of ecstasy by parents beaming indulgently and counting the merit points they'd earned on this long trip from Nova Scotia or Stockholm or Kyoto.
