AdventuresNW
Pacific Harvest: A Northwest Coast Foraging Guide
By Jennifer Hahn, Mountaineers Books (2025)
In “Pacific Harvest,” author Jennifer Hahn takes us on an eye-opening journey through Pacific Northwest ecosystems. A teacher of sustainable wild food harvesting at Western Washington University, Hahn combines her extensive knowledge of regional plants, fungi, and sea life with that of Indigenous harvesters to yield a guidebook both user-friendly and practical. If you’re not already doing so, it will make you want to do some foraging of your own.
The author divides the guide into broad categories of wild and weedy greens, berries and roses, trees and ferns, mushrooms, seaweeds and beach vegetables, and shellfish. Within each section, she discusses various species of interest and their nomenclature, how to identify them, when to harvest them, how to process them, their use to Indigenous communities and wild animals, nutritional benefits, and culinary tips. The last third of the book is where the true fun begins; here she includes recipes for the different foraged wild Refoods. Vine maple leaf tempura? Garlic-glazed geoduck? These may be beyond my pay grade, but fiddlehead fern quiche or salal berry scones sound delightful and well within my abilities. Many other appealing wild greens and seaweed recipes can be found in the book’s last pages.
This book will be intriguing for those who wish to learn to forage, but even if that’s not your goal, it is well worth a read. What you learn will change the way you explore nature, and on your walks along a beach or in a forest, you will look around you with a new appreciation of the bounty available to you.
Cathy Grinstead, born and raised in Northern California, spent her summers backpacking in the Sierra. In 2018, she retired from veterinary practice and moved to Bellingham to explore a different part of the world. She enjoys hiking, outrigger paddling, and snow sports, and loves all that Bellingham has to offer!
