Warrior Up!

The bay is a dull pewter sheet, water and sky beautifully indistinguishable. Cormorants, gulls, and scoters glide and dip, slurping ooligan, crustaceans, and the occasional herring. Harbor seals surface and stare. Ospreys eye the shallows for flopping pink salmon. An autumn sun warms the saltchuck—the cobbled intertidal zone—and the shoreline forests of alder, fir, and madrone.

The coho are running, chasing the scent of their natal creeks. Below them, waves of eelgrass undulate, reflecting and breaking the sunlight into a shadowy marine veld. A few bits of herring roe manage to cling to the gentle strands, the last hopes of a once-great fishery.