Heaven On The Half Shell

The Story of the Northwest's Love Affair with the Oyster

  I was about to sit down to a cup of hot tea one Saturday late afternoon in March with a forecast that called for heavy rain looming over what had otherwise been a sunny if chilly day. I was hunkering down at my friend's New York City apartment while she was away to Puget Sound visiting her family who owned and managed an oyster farm there. Getting comfortable on the couch, I began to look for something to read among the newspapers and magazines that were stacked on the coffee table, settling on a curious book whose cover and title immediately piqued my interest.

  Well, legend has it, I soon would learn, that historically, through the ages, the oyster has demonstrated a captivating power over certain human beings who for whatever reason cannot resist devoting themselves to the production and care of these prolific, savory mollusks. Was I so inclined? All I know is that for the rest of that weekend I slowly devoured every page of a book that proved to be something of a small revelation. 

  The book is Heaven on the Half Shell by David G. Gordon, Nancy E. Blanton, and Terry Y. Nosho, with foreword by Kenneth K. Chew ( 2003 ). And for starters, I was unaware that the Pacific Northwest had a shellfish industry with such a rich, influential history, spanning from the arrival of the earliest 19th century pioneers to the latest developments in aquaculture.

  But what makes this book truly special is the way that it brings together so many different perspectives on the oyster's story, not least among them the industry's long-standing tradition of promoting sound environmental policies and practices. Science, commerce, craft, community: the focus seems to ebb and flow from topic to topic, from page to page, as naturally as the tides, and the material is always presented in a manner that is as friendly as it is informative. Add to the mix a number of mouth-watering recipes from the region, and the authors have succeeded in creating, by way of the orderly narrative, fascinating graphics and general design, a book that convincingly earns the term ecosophical. Available online and in bookstores.

 http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Half-Shell-Northwests-Affair/dp/1558685502#reader_1558685502

OPB Documentary

The Oystermen: Oregon Experience

https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregon-experience/article/the-oystermen/

Ebb and Flow: Jerry Yashimata

An epic film documentary about a Japanese-American family, an oyster, and how they rescued the Pacific Coast shellfish industry.

From the Peninsula Daily News; February 6, 2018. Go to link: https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/film-documents-immigrants-rescue-of-states-oyster-industry/

Film Trailer on Vimeo. Go to link: https://vimeo.com/100757760

Puget Sound Mudflats

  I was intrigued and even enchanted the first time I read of the Puget Sound mudflats. The very phrase and its object did more than simply evoke the exotic. They aroused a primal feeling, an alchemy born of Mother Nature.

  I had in my lifetime on many occasions combed beaches and coves on the Atlantic Ocean, sorting out the flora and fauna I found along the way. I did likewise hunched over tidal pools on the rugged California coast, discerning with childlike curiosity what waves had brought ashore.

  But unlike other intertidal zones, a Puget Sound mudflat suggested the extraordinary. As typically envisioned - nestled between an inland sea and a tall, lush, rain-soaked forest - it brought to mind a mineral essence not merely teeming with living things, but acting as a conveyor of life force, deceptively inorganic itself yet rife with creative potential.

  And then there were those images, always more impressive in sepia or black & white. Photos of dikes and scows and oyster seed racks, of sprawling, gray mud fields exposed at low tide and covered thick with oysters. Still others of pioneer oystermen working the harvest with rakes and tongs over the side of a modest bateau.

  The low, wide shoreline and placid water; the dark band of sylvan horizon and the hummocks of dirty white shells; the cold, empty backdrop of featureless sky that so often appeared in those photos. How the elements seamlessly bled together, if less to a casual, naked eye than by way of poetic interpretation.

  My birth sun in Taurus was right at home; my moon in Pisces no less so. Imagination, I thought to myself, was setting the "must see" bar very high for any forthcoming experience.

  I can happily report however, that stepping out onto a South Sound mudflat some 15 months later did not disappoint in the least. Walking along a softly-sloped strand with its ash-black shelf of saturated, cinder-like grit pressed firm beneath my feet, I could not help but sense a trace of the volcanic source that had served as the womb for all which Time had eventually ground into mountain soil and estuary silt.

  Nor could I keep from training my sights on each of the many organisms that were strewn across my path - mussel, seaweed, aquatic insect - left behind by the latest receding tide.

  Add to this scene the organic muck that pours continually from dense, green woodlands by way of salmon-run rivers and creeks, and I groped for a word that would adequately describe the subtle yet palpable energy that pervaded the environment and all its manifest forms. Geomagnetic? Biodynamic? It was quickly clear that my search was futile. For this energy had no relation to thinking or to speaking; it was simply absorbed through the soles of your shoes.

  There were plenty of lighter moments, too. Like watching my oyster farmer friend dig up a few dozen Manila clams that were placed in a blackened, metal mesh sack to flush in a bath of brackish tidewater before being steamed for a Sunday feed. Or collecting pea crabs in an old coffee tin with Dominick and Luke, two pint-size mudflat explorers who coolly demonstrated that they already knew a thing or two about crustacean life at the water's edge.

  There were also those daybreak minutes alone when I peered from the grassy ledge that served as the tidy, backyard terrace to an otherwise tree-enveloped farmhouse. Cup of hot java firmly in hand, I would mark the change in the tide line below or follow the flight of waterfowl as they scudded across the channel, reminding myself every time and again that the calm track of water before me was one of several deep-probing fingers at the end of an ocean's long, twisted arm.

  Now make no mistake about it, not all mudflats are created equal. Nor are they always user-friendly. Some can swallow a man's rubber boots knee-high, or so the story goes. I myself would like to pursue the facts and immerse myself in a legend or two by making a tour of Puget Sound inlets in a smooth-riding kayak or canoe. I would like to investigate further the particulars of each intertidal plain and measure its distinctive role in the short and long lives of the local ecology. For  I cannot deny the mesmerizing exhilaration that comes with watching an august bald eagle glide low overhead and across a cove before lifting high toward a distant bluff on the silent strokes of powerful wings. But for those who possess an affinity for the mingling of raw earth and water, nothing redefines Nature's hierarchy quite like a mudflat on Puget Sound. 

Lloyd Vivola

January 15, 2011   

From American Shoreline Podcast Network at Oregon State University: September 5, 2020 

Engineering with Nature: Oysters

https://www.coastalnewstoday.com/podcasts/engineering-with-nature-oysters-aspn-university

Angiosperm ( Seed Vessel )

My windy heart aches

for a long veil of green fir

the feel of dark mud flat firm under my feet

the ruffle of coot wings kick-skimming still water

where sprouting light worries not

whence mornings come

Lloyd Vivola

November 5, 2011

ONE MOMENT

( in seven small waves elapsing )

A grain of sand

becomes lodged in the heart

With the longing

of being there here without wings

The enigma

is only one drop in the ocean

A blue stone

organic and pearly bright

That fits in the hand

of a moment so tenderly

Polished by tides

and the turning of stars

The enigma

is being there so far apart

Lloyd Vivola

February 9-11, 2008

Oyster Lore: The Books of E. N. Steele

Penned by a prominent Puget Sound oyster farmer and aquaculture innovator whose career spanned six decades, these no-nonsense recollections are charming for their local character, the knowledge gained through experience, and a grounded respect for community and environmental sanity. Dozens of evocative photos.

Search library catalogs, online editions, and AMAZON BOOKS.

The Immigrant Oyster ( Text and Photos ) 1964; Warren's Quick Press, Mrs. Lena Sullivan, 911 Western Ave., Seattle, Wash

The Rise and Decline of the Olympia Oyster ( Text and Photos ) 1957; Fulco Publications, Box 37, Elma, Wash. 

Pictures from the books online... go to link:

http://wsg.washington.edu/oysterstew/cool/immigrantpix.pdf