It snowed in the Cascades. The current forecast is for the snow level to drop to 1,000 feet. My house, on top of a hill, sits at about 800 feet. When it snows in Seattle, it snows at my house. It’s been bitter cold for the last few days, so a little snow on the ground at breakfast tomorrow morning wouldn’t be a total surprise.
It does snow in town, but only a few times a year and it rarely lasts. It’s a shame because I love snow. Seattle isn’t set up to deal with it very effectively and when enough snow falls for it to stick, the city grinds to a halt. One year I saw a guy on skis down in Pioneer Square—that’s at sea level—and another year a friend and I wandered the neighborhood to visit all of our friends with kids. They’d stayed home from school and were building snowmen in their front yards.
Living in Austria, as I have done for so many winter’s past, I find it more than a little ridiculous that a few inches of snow make everything stand stock still. I enjoy it all the same, though. It puts the wonder of nature right in front of our eyes and Seattle is really very pretty when our big trees and sidewalks are flocked in white.
You don’t have to go far in Seattle to get big nature. At Carkeek Park in the north end of the city, we saw bald eagles circle and land in the tops of the towering fir trees. I know there are bald eagles here, I’ve seen them before, but I never cease to be amazed at the size and strength of these enormous birds. At the waterfront wedding of my neighbors, I watched a bald eagle plunge into Puget Sound and emerge carrying a salmon in his fierce claws. “Did you SEE that?!” said a friend at my side. “That must be a good wedding omen in the Pacific Northwest!”
Some time back I made a trip up to Alaska. My travel companion and I bought a whole salmon from a fishery in the town of Homer. We took it to the beach where we were camping, built a big fire, and stuffed ourselves on grilled salmon. I might be disremembering this, but I think we fed some neighboring campers—it’s absolutely the sort of thing I’d do, so indulge the lack of factual retrospection. Even though we’d bought the smallest fish available, were full to bursting, and had fed the neighbors, we still had a ton of salmon. My travel companion walked down to the edge of the water and hurled the rest of the fish back in to the surf. It sounds like a waste, I know, but we couldn’t take it with us and if you think about it, it’s kind of a fitting thing to do.
There are dead salmon on the beach at Carkeek Park. They die as they make their way out of the sound and upriver to spawn. The fish carcasses lie on the beach decaying, their trademark hook jawlines giving away their identities. They wear neon green tags with numbers on them—it’s someone’s job to come out and tag the dead fish—perhaps they’re inventorying them and the green tags are part of that.
I made a note to myself to ask the Internet about why the fish are dying but I wasn’t totally surprised to see them. Salmon are part of the big nature we have here in Seattle, too. Not long after I met my Austrian husband, I bought a little silver ring in the shape of a salmon. It’s a Northwest Native design and I never take it off. Or, I didn’t, until I broke it. I might be disremembering again, but I think I was with the Austrian at Pike Place Market when I bought a replacement for the one I’d broken. I’m not a baubles kinda gal, but I missed my fish.
