The crab I trapped overnight at Cornet Bay tap-scratched the inside of the blue bucket. That the foursome was a winter season record for me was great, but I dreaded what I needed to do next: kill ’em. The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) site’s section on Cleaning and Preparing Crab suggests …
Continue reading “Readings Between the Spines: My Quest For the Best Crabbing Time”
Scarecrow and Tin Man didn’t know how good they had it. According to the National Science Foundation, “With few exceptions, jellyfish are brainless, bloodless, boneless and heartless, and have only the most elementary nervous systems.” Every Whidbey and Fidalgo islander has likely encountered a rusty-maroon eight-lobed blob lying along the shore: Cyanea capillata or Lion’s Mane jellyfish. …
Race day morning: raindrops barraging the skylights, wind whipping through the trees, and a forecast of 100% chance of rain from nine to noon, the duration of the Bellingham Trail Half Marathon. So, I did what any self-respecting person would do, went back to bed. As I lay there, I knew I wouldn’t be able …
Continue reading “Chin Scraper, Trail Taker, Might I Need a Pacemaker?”
In the Contributor’s Notes about his story The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever, author Daniel H. Wilson explains his use of a black hole, “In my mind, the black hole represents the terrible actuality of holding on forever. It violently demonstrates what we all know to be true in our hearts: we must always be letting …
Putting The Art of Racing in the Rain into practice wouldn’t have been necessary during this year’s Dallas Kloke Mt Erie Road and Trail Run. Meteorologists forecasted cloudy skies with no chance of precipitation. Had I known my new nemesis, younger and smaller than I, would embarrass me so much, I may have decided to just …
Lying flat on my back on the wet grass after the race, a guy behind me says, “That was hard as f&*#.” I smile and say to my sister, “What he said.” The previous afternoon, as JoDee and I previewed the final mile of the 30K/50K courses, she was tearful. My sister had injured her IT …
“I love you and the kids, but I need to die…,” are the words I spoke to my husband one day in January of 2004. He hugged me, loaded the family into the car, and drove to our local hospital, where a nurse handed me half a tablet of Ativan and, when it had little effect, …
“Eat my dust,” said no runner EVER, but that’s what over 1,700 participants in the inaugural running of Ragnar Trail Cascades did (and I theirs), literally, while on the trails and in The Village at Loup Loup Ski Bowl this past weekend. Fifteen four-person ultra and 204 eight-person regular teams converged upon this little known …
“Be afraid. Be very afraid,” is what I would have said to Washington State’s Class of 2019 students and their parents a year ago. In July of 2011, the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction adopted Common Core State Standards. Since then, assessments required for high school graduation have become more difficult. Five years after …
Gravity. It’s not something most of us spend much time thinking about, including me, until this summer, when I read Chuck Klosterman’s essay collection But What If We’re Wrong? It begins (p 3), ‘Like most people, I like to think of myself as a skeptical person. But I’m pretty much in the tank for gravity. It’s …
Continue reading “Sisters, a Trail Run Along a Road, and Some Stuff About Gravity”
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