I did something to deserve good luck in a former life. Or something. To deserve having really darn cool cousins that happen to be rad wild food lovers in one of the most beautiful places on the planet – and to be great friends with them to boot. It’d been 5 years since our last visit, and I was overdue for a seafood-fest. This visit really was a stark reminder of how seriously localized our food is – I think I’ve had crab once in those 5 years, for a good friend’s birthday. I think it had been the full 5 years since a spot prawn, oyster, or rock cod.

Our time there consisted as follows: Coffee. Drop prawn traps in the morning. Eat breakfast and figure out what the tides were doing. Fish for salmon on the flood tide, cod on the beginning of the ebb. Pull prawn traps, drop prawn traps. Eat. Visit. Sleep. Repeat. Mix it up here and there with some crab trap action, oyster collecting, foraging for huckleberries, and rowing. Loveliness. Hauling up lunker cod from the bottom is always fun, as is the anticipation of seeing what prawn pots will yield, but after a long winter of ice fishing, casting into schools of hundreds of pink salmon that you could see swim around you was a definite highlight.

It took me a lot of travel to realize that this spot on the planet is special for its epic natural beauty and wild food bounty. I’m glad I now get it, and appreciate it. I grew up adoring this place and these people, and still do. Not sure what else there is to say.