In the great crab race, there are those who believe that Alaska’s King Crabs get the checkered flag and beat all other decapod crustaceans for flavor. When Charles and I lived in Baltimore, Md., and Fort Worth, Tex., we were in the stands cheering on the sleek Blue Crab while the rambunctious Floridians were raising [...]
Being a Buddhist, I don’t believe in killing animals for the sake of sport. But that has its drawbacks when you’re angling on the wave-soaked rocks of Garibaldi’s north jetty.
I’m thinking back to the first time that I took Charles jetty fishing with me. I was happy to rig his line and bait his hook [...]
“Crater Lake: overwhelmingly yet sublimely beautiful. Moody. At times brilliantly blue, ominously somber; at other times buried in a mass of brooding clouds. The lake is magical, enchanting – a remnant of fiery times, a reflector of its adjacent forested slopes, a product of Nature’s grand design.
Few places on earth command overwhelming awe from observers, [...]
As a child growing up in Bangkok, I remember going to the markets with my mother and seeing tanks teeming with live fish, eels, crabs, snails, clams, and tubs filled with live mudfish, frogs and other sea creatures, and being able to select your dinner live, and take it home so that it’s as fresh [...]
The one thing that I quickly learned from Oregon natives after moving here is you can’t let the weather deter you. The weather in Salem or Portland can be nice and sunny, but by the time you get to the coast an hour to the west it can be blustery and rainy. But you just [...]
Most people work all day at a stressful job in an office and then to blow off steam, they go work out at a windowless indoor gym somewhere. In Oregon, you can still go to an indoor gym, but why do that when there’s so much more you can do outdoors?
Right around the end of [...]
It’s that time of year in Oregon when marionberries and blackberries appear in great abundance. Wild blackberries are virtually everywhere in the Willamette Valley, even growing along the median of Interstate 5.
I can literally walk out my front door and return with enough berries to make a pie or cobbler in a very short period [...]
When we first moved here from Baltimore more than 6 years ago it was the middle of winter. In Oregon, that means days and days of drizzle. I think that December I counted 30 days of rain in a row. Don’t get me wrong. I’d take 30 days of drizzle in the winter over stretches [...]
The sturdy fishing boat, Maranatha, left Dockside Charters in Depoe Bay just before first light on this brisk August morning. (The name, Maranatha, puzzled us until we could google it, however we were relieved that we weren’t leaving dry land on any boat called the Minnow.) Victor, Ann Thompson and I were bundled in layers [...]
