Water

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 …

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 …

The San Juan Islands are world famous, attracting all manner of seafarers who enjoy exploring this luscious archipelago in everything from yachts to sailboats to kayaks. They are also a playground for hikers, beachcombers, and birdwatchers. Consisting of more than 400 islands (depending on who does the counting), the San Juans have some marquee attractions: Sucia with its picture-perfect anchorages …

Breaching killer whales, soaring eagles, and sea lions hauled out on rocks along stunning shorelines—these are just a few of the sights that people travel to the San Juan Islands every year by foot, boat, or plane to behold. Of course, if you’ve been to the islands before, then you know their moniker as “the hidden gem of Washington State” …

Every year, between 8 and 12 million tons of plastic, much of it single-use, enter the ocean. While larger pieces may break into smaller ones in the water and on the beaches, the plastic itself never completely breaks down. Individual pieces of plastic can be rendered microscopic, perhaps difficult to see, but they are not gone. The issues surrounding marine …

In the winter of 1952, when I was a little boy of five, my family sailed across the North Atlantic from Europe on a small troop ship. The storm we endured, the mountainous seas and howling winds, and the mélange of fear and awe it generated, will forever be etched in my soul. It may have been less than the …

Crunch. That’s not the sound I wanted to hear at the back of a dark sea cave underneath a basalt headland pummeled by ocean swell. As the stern of my kayak banged into the rock wall, I paddled forward, hard, as the next swell came through. Not hard enough. The wave pushed me against the cave wall. I pushed myself …

In the spring of 1984, a team of scuba divers assembled on the rough cobble beach of Legoe Bay, located on the shores of Lummi Island in the Salish Sea. Along with a crew of archaeology students, their purpose was unusual. They were not there to search out the sunken remains of a ship but rather to investigate stories that …

Marriage takes a lot of work; no one will argue that point. Having differences in religion, child-rearing ideas, and/or politics can make it even more challenging. What I’m about to describe is even more serious: differing philosophies about elegant fly fishing and lowly bait/lure fishing!  For some couples, this divergence is more confounding than any of those mentioned above. Allow …

I’m dozing, when high-pitched screams followed by angry whistling tugs me away from my nap on the warm sand. Through binoculars, I spot three crow-sized birds, taking turns dive-bombing a bald eagle perched in a tree on the nearby point. Each dive-bomber lunges, screaming, at the eagle, only to pull up at the last moment, and fly back up to the heights while its …