This post stirs a special memory of growing up on the shores of a southern arm of Puget Sound, Hammersley Inlet. When I was 12, after a summer's day of unsuccessful fishing with my grandfather for cutthroat trout, while the tide was at its lowest, he beached the boat on a sandbar and taught me how to pursue a geoduck. With the tide coming in and two futile efforts I was determined to capture a geoduck and talked grandpa into letting me try one more time. After some furious shoveling, I lay down over the hole as the rising tidewater began streaming into it. I stretched my arm into the muck as far as I could reach, and felt the geoduck's neck with my fingertips. I pushed my shoulder down farther, tilted my head up to keep my chin out of the water, gripped the fat neck as hard as I could, and, just as grandpa was about to pull me out, the geoduck surrendered. When I finally extracted it, and held it up, it was almost as long as I was. No cutthroat that day, but I took home a trophy.
By the way, Hood Canal is WEST of Seattle. Two hours east of Seattle you can find a nice Cabernet but no geoducks!

Reply