In my year-long tenure as a Writing the Land poet, I penned several poems about Todd Creek, the Whatcom Land Trust (WLT) parcel I adopted. The Whatcom Conservation District is partnering with the WLT to restore 22.4 acres of riparian habitat along this beautiful creek in the South Fork Valley of the Nooksack River in Whatcom County. At the end …
Read More »Water
Dark Beauty: Notes from Winter Sailing Journeys on the Salish Sea
Bellingham Before casting off, we met friends at the Cabin Tavern. It was dark and wet beyond the cold windowpane but warm and convivial around the table. Ordering at the bar, I told the bartender she wouldn’t see me for some time as I’d be sailing the Salish Sea. “Oh, that sounds great!” she said, likely picturing the summer …
Read More »Rare Birds: The Endangered Puffins of the Salish Sea
The air buzzes with excitement as each smiling guest, aged five to 99, boards the vessel, united by a shared mission to encounter one of the Pacific Northwest’s most captivating maritime treasures: a football-sized seabird that spends most of its life in the vast Pacific Ocean: the Tufted Puffin. As we head south from the marina, a curious nine-year-old girl …
Read More »Imua: Go Forward
We hear the words “paddles ready…paddles set…and hit” from our steersperson, and the outrigger canoe starts its glide through the water, gaining speed with our paddle strokes. We round the breakwater and out into the open water of Fairhaven Harbor. All of us relish this feeling of getting on the water and moving together. It feels like freedom. On quiet …
Read More »A River of Stories
The Skagit River sustains humans in many ways, from providing drinking water to irrigating crops and nurturing fisheries. Of course, the basin is also home to a profound richness of wildlife, including bears, salmon, bald eagles, otters, trout, voles, elk, swans, and the Pacific giant salamander. The river is a popular destination for recreation—camping, kayaking, rafting, fly-fishing, skinny-dipping—as well as …
Read More »Skagit Notes: 20 Years of Canoe Tripping
These four poems originate from 20 years of canoe tripping on the Skagit River from Ross Lake to the Salish Sea. The Skagit is a river, a watershed, a cultural identity, a place of spirits, and a home. As a guest on native land, I acknowledge the people whose longhouses and seasonal camps bordered the river from the mountains to …
Read More »Mercy of Giants
A humpback whale surfaced a hundred feet away, so close that whirlpools and waves rocked my paddleboard. For several days, I had hoped for a close encounter with a whale. While kneeling on my board and clutching its sides to keep from capsizing, I felt something I hadn’t expected: fear. The humpback surfaced and blew three times, lifted its flukes …
Read More »How Whitewater Paddling Woke Me Up
The Life Calendar on my wall is a tall stack of 1080 rows divided into groups of 12. Vertical columns divide the rows (months) into 31 boxes each, creating a giant grid representing every day/month/year of a life spanning 90 years. I highlighted in green all the boxes corresponding to my past. Days I’ve lived. A thin band of rows …
Read More »The Immersion
Near the High Divide of Olympic National Park, I entered the sapphire waters of Hoh Lake and snorkeled with thousands of pollywogs. These tadpoles were all squiggling in the same direction: clockwise. I matched my swimming pace to their movement, and together we traveled through the shallows along the shore. Being part of this mass migration was as thrilling as …
Read More »Race Week in Anacortes: A Yachting Tradition Sails On
To describe Yachting Magazine as the journal of record for those who ply our coastal waters (and mid-oceans) in artfully engineered sailboats is not hyperbole. Publisher Oswald Garrison Villard published the magazine’s first issue on New Year’s Day, 1907. Over the years, the magazine began putting on seminal ‘Race Week’ events across the U.S., yacht races that possessed both towering prestige …
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