MUSING, CONTINUED FROM AUG. 3

Sorry, readers. The post cut itself off after the first paragraph. Here is the rest of the post (I have a new computer with 8.1, and must be guilty of some errors).

Salmon runs this years in both the San Juans and the rivers are beyond expectation. The waters must be healthy. In my book on the Columbia River I mentioned the sea lions that hang out near the base of Bonneville Dam neat Portland and Vancouver WA. They wait for easy pickings of salmon heading for spawning streams upriver, who use the special ladders built into Bonneville to access them. Because laws prevent harming the sea lions that come in from the Pacific and go upriver, all fisheries people can do (at least mostly) is to net the most aggressive predators and truck them back down to California and turn them loose again in the Pacific. However, the sea lions are back to Bonneville almost as soon as the trucks. Well, Nature at work, I guess.

Northwesterners are opinionated about how to cook salmon; mostly they deplore cooks who over-cook the fish. Barbecuing salmon is very popular, and one cook adds brown sugar to coat them first, other teriyaki sauce, another adopts the native American way of impaling filets on leaning sticks or boards as far away from an open campfire that one could place his hand between fire and stick and not get burned. It takes hours for the fish to but taste great. The types of wood used for the fire are important. 

I found it interesting while researching the settling of the Northwest by non-natives to learn that settlers from the sea took up residence here while Midwesterners still fought with local natives. Also, with no Panama Canal yet built, explorers had to sail around South American and the infamous Cape Horn to be able to sail north all the way of what is now western Canada or Alaska. I was lucky enough to stand on Cape Horn about 12 years ago and muse about the many ships that lay beneath the turbulent waters adjacent to it. Even the supply ship for Hudson's Bay post at Vancouver WA had to sail all the way around that obstacle to get to and sail up the Columbia River to the HBC post.  What intrepid ancestors we have!