Clam karma

When I was a young girl, my father would scour the Saturday morning edition of the Redding Record-Searchlight (aka the Wretched Flashlight) for the weekend’s happenings. Since Redding was a small town at the time, there was usually only one thing happening, and sometimes nothing other than a 4-H meeting. As the town and we grew, we occasionally had choices, but oftentimes there was still nothing to do, and Daddy had to fabricate outings. We traipsed around stamp mills in old gold mines (updating our tetanus shots as needed), went shooting at beer cans, and sledded down Eskimo Hill on big truck inner tubes.

It appears my Darling Husband has begun channeling my father’s spirit, for last week he announced we were going clamming. Bear in mind that this is the same man who grew up in a land-locked region, one where fish is something square and breaded and acquiring it requires no more than reaching into a freezer case. When I met him, he announced he didn’t like fish, something incomprehensible to a girl weaned on cracked Dungeness crab and abalone (something my children will likely never taste, sigh). And as Darling as my Husband is, he is much more likely to be found on a dance floor than by a campfire (though he is warming to the latter). Let’s face it; I did not marry an outdoorsy guy.

So, with a low tide and a wet weather front approaching, we packed the back of the Volvo full to brimming: buckets, shovels, rubber boots, gloves, change of clothes (oops, forgot the garbage bags for the wet ones), and then tucked in a thermos of hot tea and the camp stove for a hot supper on the beach. We figured this was either going to be a fun time in spite of the weather, or another debacle/adventure to tell our grandkids.

We swung by Fred Meyer to get our permits (I honestly never thought I’d be buying a permit from the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife), then by the school to pick up Number One Son’s forgotten rain jacket. On the way to the freeway, the karma kicked in: the railroad crossing gates closed in front of us, and we got to wave to the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train passengers.

We had decided on a leisurely trip south, since the tide wasn’t out until 4:16 p.m., so we stopped for lunch at IKEA and again just past Olympia to pick up a letterbox. The rain held off until we were within striking distance of Frye Cove, our clamming destination. Darling Husband’s co-workers were already on the beach and gleefully took us in hand. In no time, Number One Son was filling his bucket, and even Little One had managed to pick up a few, getting magnificently wet and muddy in mere minutes (the torrential rain helped).

We watched a motivated soul dig up a horse clam (they’re fast, something I did not know). And then came a seriously equipped clammer, with the telltale oversized tube: the bearded native, in search of the geoduck. It took him nearly half an hour (his dog helped dig), but this fellow dug out a 3 pound beauty—and that’s all he took, since it will yield him more than two meals. After two hours on the beach, we had a few dozen clams, well under the limit, but also three small geoducks of our own. We fired up the camp stove on the tailgate and shared beef stew and a crusty loaf with our fellow muddy clammers, then packed up for the trek home to get our tired little bunnies to bed. In a true Northwest moment, the rain finally stopped and the sun broke through just as we drove away from the park.

At home, as we carried armloads of sandy clothes from the car, I noted that the trip meter read just 85 miles. It is rare that we are so connected with our food, and I am motivated to give a good part of my afternoon to making clam chowder—from scratch! The shellfish are lounging in a bucket of seawater on our back porch, spitting out their sand and awaiting steaming. If it were later in the year, I would pull potatoes and celery from our own garden, but I will have to pick up some waxy red-skinned potatoes and a green stalk from the co-op. I will, however pick a few of my baby lettuce leaves to mix in with the offerings from the Rent’s Due Ranch in Carnation.

Darling Husband may have avoided digging in the sand, but he will be learning to clean geoducks this evening. And while I don’t anticipate buying any other Fish & Wildlife permits anytime soon, I do note that my license also allows me to gather seaweed, and that the boys are allowed to fish through April of next year. I can only wonder what adventures my father and husband are planning next.