The Great Geoduck Hunt of 2009

Geoduck:

Pronunciation:

\ˈgü-ē-ˌdək\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Lushootseed (Salishan language of the Puget Sound region) gʷídəq

Date:

1883

: a large edible clam (Panopea abrupta syn. P. generosa) of the Pacific coast that usually weighs two to three pounds (about one kilogram) but may attain a weight of over ten pounds (4.5 kilograms)

And there it begins....

So, one of the annual rites of summer is the Bounty of the Sea party hosted by our good friend, in a location unlike any other, and so full of beer and sealife it's amazing no one ends up with food poisoning...because after all, all sealife looks delicious after several beers. And lucky for us, we just happened to be in the area when the low tide dipped to -3.4' exposing all sorts of intertidal wonders, and making for prime geoducking.

The great thing about the late spring/early summer low tides is that they fall smack dab in the middle of the day--bad if you're a little eelgrass plant (Zostera marina) trying hard not to dry out waiting for the incoming tide, but ummm, ummm good if you're out to dig halfway to China in search of a phallic-looking clam (and incidentally, the antipodal point to our geoduck grounds happens to be somewhere between S. Africa and Antarctica, and not China at all). While the breeze was fresh, the air temperature wasn't bad and our bellies were full of breakfast, so we set out for the hunting grounds with tools of the trade and some beers for the clam bucket.

The first task in hunting the goeduck, is to locate a siphon sticking up in the sand. Our preferred location happens to have a mixture of horse clams (Tresus spp.) and geoducks--differentiating between the two can be tricky, but our well-trained party had it down (and I'm not about to divulge all the secrets here). Horse clams make for fine clam burgers, so in the event of a mis-identification, not all is lost (and the secrets aren't that secret as there is plenty of available information on how to dig geoducks). Horse clams also tend to be a little easier to dig, yielding higher success rates and cleaner, drier clothing. A couple of intrepid diggers from our group pulled 7 out of a single hole--that's some persistence!

Once the siphon is located, the "tube" is placed around it and pushed into the sediment. At this point the furious digging begins (I don't know that speed is critical, it just makes for a more dramatic pursuit). It helps to have a few looker-on-ers cheering you on and critiquing your digging--think public works project, but with a lower budget.

If the beastie is deep, it becomes necessary to employ advanced techniques, including finding a really tall dude with 6' long arms to reach in the hole. In the absence of said character, contortionism plays a good role in wrangling the siphon and then shell. It's important not to cut the siphon during the digging process or you will be ridiculed during extraction--the best dug 'Ducks have intact siphons, showing off all their overstuffed glory.


And if all goes well: success!

They are kind of awful looking things, but they taste pretty alright and go nicely with cold beer. This year's haul also included plenty of mussels and steamers and some tasty clam burgers. Not bad for a few days of fun.

Outside of sticking the rental Versa in a wetland, the trip was a big success. We got to hang with our 'Peeps and feel like we were back in our own habitat. Spending some time collecting salty seafood was just the ticket for spending a remarkably lovely weekend in the PacNW. We missed having the Salty One out on the mudflats with us, be she no doubt enjoyed her time at the familial dog spa.

Getting Out

In between visiting, beer drinking, and digging clams (more to come on that later), it seemed that a good way to enjoy my time back in the Emerald City was to get out of the Emerald City. And so, with borrowed dogs, car, and hiking partner, I set off for a day in the Cascades. It's been a few years since I had done Lake 22, but remembered it being a pretty good early season hike, with lingering snow and some nice flowers...I apparently failed to remember that it had stunning views (I think it may have been foggy/cloudy the last time I was there). And at 2.7 miles and 1,500' up to the low-elevation (2,400') tarn, it's a good bang for your buck--always a plus, given finite time. The area is right below Mt. Pilchuck, one of my favorite easily accessible Cascade day hikes, but being nestled into the side of Pilchuck, Lake 22 affords an earlier approach. That being said we still found plenty of snow!

The area was set aside in the 1940s for research, so the trees are big and the forest looks more like the Olympics than the Cascades, with lots of grand Bigleaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum), ferns, and lots of moss. The first 2 miles are all forested and we were lucky that the bugs didn't find us and that there was plenty of fresh water for the dogs to slurp up! We missed the trillium by a bit, so only saw leaves, but there were some other wildflowers that were starting to show their little heads. As we approached the lake, the snow got pretty thick and I was grateful for my loaner hiking poles, given the lack of tread on my shoes! It was warm and there was a lot of melting going on, so some of the snow bridges resulted in a pole poke, a soft step, and crossed fingers hoping they would hold...kept it exciting! Twenty-two Creek was beautiful, with snow still along the banks, the striations showing off layers of winter accumulation.

As we sat at the Lake and enjoyed lunch and a Simpler Times, we saw small avalanches tumbling down from Pilchuck's flanks. Even at the great distance we were at, the sound was incredibly loud, like thunder claps and then rumbles. We sat in the sun for a while watching the spazzy pup chase snowballs, and then decided to make our way back down. As we rounded the first corner we heard a huge crash and realized we got up 2 minutes too soon and missed a huge show! Oh well. It was a beautiful day to be out enjoying a hike, with a view of some real mountains!

The Salty Dog's arch nemesis, Stella. SD would have liked the hike, but not the airplane to get here!

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall...

Since I was just scoping out tickets for Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson (and John "Don't Call Me Cougar" Mellencamp), I figured the title was fitting. And the fact of the matter is, when it rains here, it rains. None of this pansy "I might rain, I might not rain" Seattle gray--the rain in the Mid-Atlantic is serious--like inches in an hour serious! Audible rain serious! Seattle rain is quiet, peaceful, like a cold wet blanket; here the rain just seems angry and content to wash away whatever foul lawn chemicals (and soil) stand in its way. Granted, the on-again/off-again nature of the storms has been keeping everything a very lush green, but sometimes it feels like everything is completely saturated and it just won't stop.

We have been dutifully tending to our fledgling plants, trying to nurture them in sheltered surroundings before sending them out to the Lower 40 where they'll be subjected to all manner of yard beasts. But keeping peat pots intact with the torrential rainfall has been impossible. A week ago, we got such heavy rain, I wasn't sure we'd need to water the garden again all summer. But sure enough, by the end of this week, the pepper pots were dry and the young herbs looked thirsty, so we pulled out the hose. Not 36 hrs. later, we're back in the drowning rat phase, with the yard again a pond and the drip line a not-so-subtle reminder that the gutters are clogged with all that oak detritus. And having gone from high 80s to low 50s in less than 24 hours, the peppers were drained of their standing water and brought back inside to spend a few more nights living large in the spare bedroom. Of course this means the arugula is hanging on and the lettuces are really quite happy (outside of the abuse they take at the hands of the gigantic raindrops...powered by gravity), so we've been feasting on a steady diet of home-grown greens. Not a bad thing at all.

Catching Up

Ahhhhhhh--breathing a sigh of relief after a marathon semester. Judging by the Simpler Times in the yard hole (and the wayward one in with the lettuces) this morning, I think we did the celebration some justice.

That aside, I finally have some time to sit down and pen a post. The lack of writing certainly hasn't been for lack of things to write about--just non-stop.

I made my first trip to western VA last weekend--it wasn't exactly vacation, but I could see it being a nice place to be for vacation. The purpose of the trip was to electroshock some darters and small silver jobs (Notropis spp., but SSJ's will do, unless you're good at counting pharyngeal teeth after a half-dozen beers). We surveyed a bunch of different rivers and I was amazed by the diversity of freshwater fishes in the Southern Appalachians (perhaps the most diverse native freshwater fish fauna in North America). Highlights included the margined madtom (Noturus insignis), the fantail darter (Etheostoma flabellare), and everyone's favorite: the candy darter, (Etheostoma osburni), with colors to rival those of most reef fishes. Another cool find (besides a lot of rural road-kill, including a sizable snapping turtle) was a hellbender. I had no idea what this was before we caught one, but according to the Hellbender Homepage: "Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) are extremely large, completely aquatic salamanders native to the eastern United States. The largest hellbender ever recorded was nearly 21/2 ft. long." Ours was closer to 1 foot than 2.5, but it was still a really impressive salamander...kind of prehistoric looking.

While we were out in that part of the world, we stayed at the UVA Mountain Lake Biological Station, which is my favorite kind of field outpost--a beautiful and peaceful location, with a few dedicated souls studying all sorts of ecology. I was pleased to strike up a conversation with a nice dude studying dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) and I learned a ton from our 15-minute chat.

There was another highlight to the trip (one I will, no doubt, be ridiculed for mentioning): the proximity to the resort where Dirty Dancing was filmed! How many times did I say "Nobody puts Baby in a corner..." and "Uh, I carried a watermelon?..." while I was there??? Too many to count, but I loved that "Kellerman's" was a stones throw away! Haha!


Beyond excursions, we've been watching all the trees flower and leaf out and are continually amazed by how much crap falls from the local oaks! Apparently, they spew leaves in the fall--lots of leaves--and catkins in the spring--lots of catkins. This makes for just a wee bit of pollinated mayhem in the yard! Thankfully, we seem to get these amazing thunderstorms every few days, which knock most of the evil yellow stuff out of the air--achoooo--good for the allergy sufferers, not so great for the canine, who has developed a major aversion to such meteorological events! At last try, we couldn't even get a rawhide treat to calm her nerves. Poor girl.


On the homefront, a day of freedom from the books, meant some major devotion to the garden. Our seedlings had long outgrown their starter flats, so I had to transplant everything into larger pots for the final few weeks before they get put into the ground--damn, we over-planted! I think fitting 40+ tomato plants (of 6 varieties), 44+ pepper plants (of 8 varieties) plus all the other stuff we have into the 72 sq. ft of garden we have set aside is going to be a challenge! Can you say annex?


We were able to harvest the first of the lettuces and arugula today! The gardener-in-chief braved a torrential downpour to put some food on our table--carefully selecting the best looking leafy green things for our dinner salad. It was delicious! Through the miracles of photosynthesis, we should be filling our salad bowl with more than just leafy greens in a few months...the peas are looking good enough that it could be just a few weeks before we steal some of those from the vines!