Closer to the Ground

by Dylan Tomine

  And then, we aren’t finding clams anymore. I stomp harder, the kids crouch lower to examine the sand for any trace of life, and…nothing. “Dad,” Skyla says, “We can’t see any shows now.” I look up to an eerie, beautiful sight: Thousands of glowing lanterns moving back and forth along the waterline, defining the curve of the beach for miles to the north. No wonder we can’t see any clams. It’s getting dark.

  “Okay,” I say, “wait right here with Mom, and stay out of the water.” I jog up to where I think the car should be (only it’s not), and knowing we’ve been working our way south, start walking up the line of parked cars. The wind velocity has picked up, and now the rain starts, pelting my jacket and hood like shotgun pellets. I finally find the car, much farther north than I expected, and try to light the lantern. Easier said than done. With the wind and wet hands it takes approximately 45 matches. The bright, cheerful glow comes as a relief.

  As I’m locking up, Candace, Glen, and the Sweeneys pull in and pile out. “Nice weather,” someone shouts. By now, Stacy and the kids have been on the beach in the dark for half an hour, so I say a quick hello and hustle back down the beach. Halfway there, a monstrous gust knocks me sideways and blows out the lantern. It takes another 45 matches to get it lit again.

  When I reach them, Stacy and Skyla have somehow located a clam in the dark and are gunning it up. Weston sits next to them in a shallow depression, waist-deep in water. He looks up at me with a guilty smile. Skyla’s raincoat flaps in the wind and her teeth chatter. “Let’s go in,” Stacy says. “I think we’ve had enough.” “But Dad just got back with the lantern,” Skyla says through quivering lips. “Let’s dig five more clams.” We settle on two, dig them, and call it a night.

  We stumble back to the car and find the Sweeneys already there. With eight clams in their bag, they’re packing it in, too. We gather around the back of their Suburban, peeling wet, gritty gear off shivering kids. In a stroke of genius, Sweeney has brought a barrel-sized beverage cooler filled with hot water. When he opens the spigot, we rinse our hands, and Weston’s whole body, under the steaming flow. “Maybe tomorrow it’ll be better,” Stacy says. “It has to let up sometime, right?”

  Long after the kids have warmed up in hot baths, filled their bellies with cheesy noodles in front of the fire, and nestled into sleeping bags, Candace and Glen show up dripping wet, wind-blasted, and limited out. “Thirty clams the hard way,” Glen says. Stacy pulls birthday lasagnas from the oven – one made with multicolored Northern Lights chard and a creamy béchamel sauce, the other bubbling with red sauce made from the last of our windowsill-ripened tomatoes. In our haste to consume maximum warm calories, we forget to sing “Happy Birthday,” but nobody seems to mind. Glasses of malbec are raised, more lasagna eaten, and just as I’m drifting into a happy, hazy dream world, Mia starts the coffee. There’s still work to do.

  Like most shellfish, razor clams need to be cleaned while they’re still alive to prevent bacterial growth. And that means now, regardless of fatigue, overeating, or any of a hundred other good reasons to lie on the couch and doze. Thankfully, the cabin has a garage, so we’ll be working out of the weather.

  Glen fires up the propane stove, and in memory of the Great Fleece Jacket Fire, we give it a wide berth as we bustle around in our combustible synthetic insulation. Our old black-enameled Dutch oven, half filled with fresh water, goes onto the stove, and when it comes to a boil, I dip a mesh bag of clams into the pot just long enough for the shells to pop open. Then it’s a quick rinse in a bucket of ice water to keep them from cooking, and they’re good to go. Let the cleaning begin.

  The clams slide easily out of their shells, and with a pair of old scissors we snip the tough siphon tips off and cut along one side from top to bottom until each body opens up like a butterfly. Digestive organs are sliced away, and the foot, or digger, is separated from the body and filleted to remove the organs inside. What remains of each clam are two succulent pieces of meat: the flat, oblong disk of body and siphon, with a big hole in the middle where the guts used to be, and the tender, boot-shaped foot. From a good clam, the doughnut-shaped main body “steak” will more than cover your hand, and the foot will be a third that size. With small “peanut” razors, the edible parts are minuscule. The amount of work, though, is the same, and the importance of targeting bigger clams becomes readily apparent after a few minutes over the cleaning bucket.

  It’s two o’clock in the morning when we rinse the last bits of sand from our cleaned clams and sort them into ziplocks. There’s nothing like standing on a cold concrete slab in the middle of the night to take the starch out of you. Every joint in my body seems to have fused, but we’re done. Hallelujah. But wait. “The clam guts are going to bring in raccoons, don’t you think?” Sweeney asks. We pull on our boots and wet, sandy rain gear and haul the gutbuckets down to the beach in a raging typhoon. “This is insane,” Glen says. “It’s gotta let up sometime, right?”

  Saturday morning. After a long night of restless sleep, with wind howling outside the cabin and rain rattling and gurgling through downspouts, we’ve got 12 hours to kill before the evening dig. Nobody wants to spend the day trapped inside a small cabin with four wild banshee children, either.

  So we drive north to fish a small estuary known for its big coastal silver salmon. It’s running chocolate brown with storm runoff today, and the locals tossing lures into the dark current look glum. Sweeney and I make a few halfhearted casts and give up when a full-size refrigerator comes floating downstream along with what looks like half of a house. We hike up into the forest searching for chanterelles, but heavy, soaking brush and the occasional falling fir tree drive us back to the car within minutes. We take the kids down to the jetty to watch the storm pounding ashore, but find towering green waves exploding over the rocks and flooding the parking lot.

  Trapped in a small cabin with four wild banshee children it is.

  The afternoon passes slowly, but the kids, much to everyone’s surprise, remain calm. After our brief foray into the deluge, they’re perfectly content to enjoy the coziness of warm shelter. Weston talks Sweeney (then Glen, then me) into “dinosaur wrestling” on the carpeted floor, and when he’s worn us all out settles for watching football on TV. Skyla alternates between drawing and sounding out words in her reading-lesson book. The older girls, Laine and Maren, play a board game, then help Glen make corn tortillas for tonight’s dinner.

  I’m having a hard time settling in. This forced captivity takes some serious recalibration. Without my never-ending list of home projects to work on, I am forced to relax. After pacing back and forth for a while, staring at the weather through rain-spattered windows, I eventually sit back on the couch and watch the Huskies lose another football game. I can’t remember the last time I lounged around doing nothing during daylight hours. It’s a little disorienting. But I think I could get used to it.

  Meanwhile, the storm keeps pummeling the beach and rocking the cabin to its foundation.

  Glen is making deer tacos for dinner, stewing down an enormous pot of ground venison, whole-roasted peppers, onions, and tomatoes with plenty of garlic and cumin. The kids scoop balls of wet masa into a press, pushing down on the lever and dropping tortillas onto a griddle. Mia sets out a big fillet of smoked salmon and crackers. Stacy opens a jar of our garden salsa and an industrial-size bag of chips. I contribute by intermittently prying myself off the couch to hover around the kitchen and sample the food.

  When we all sit down to dinner – a somewhat pointless formality since we’ve been eating continuously for the past five hours – the long parade of trucks starts rumbling past the cabin, headed for the beach. Tonight, though, there’s an equally long procession of trucks turning around and heading back in the other direction. Even the tough-as-nails Olympic Peninsula locals are retreating. Full of good food, warm and comfortable, I can’t imagine going back out into the storm. Clamming hasn’t even crossed my mind. Glen pushes back from the table, looks out into the dusk, and say
s, “We’re here. I’m going.” Bastard.

  We’re all going. We march into the ferocious wind, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle to the ground, hoods cinched tight and still flapping around our faces. Bigger gusts push the kids sideways and the glow sticks I hung around their necks fly out behind them. My glasses are streaked with rain and sand, leaving me looking through a kaleidoscope of lantern glare at vague shapes of light and dark. To quote my brother, “Does the fun ever start?”

  I would like to say that our heroic effort is rewarded with a bounty of razor clams. Or even a few. But 40 minutes into it, when a particularly substantial blast of wind blows our last working lantern out, we surrender and head back to the cabin, tails between our legs. In our combined clam bags (seven of us were optimistic enough to carry one) resides a single, lonely razor clam that was spotted by Laine and gunned by Stacy. It is approximately 1½ inches long. “Well,” Stacy says, “at least we won’t be up late cleaning clams tonight.”

  Sunday night. Now that we’re home, my enthusiasm has returned with the anticipation of dinner. This morning, with the season closed and no way for us to legally dig, Mother Nature got the last laugh: The day dawned bright blue, unseasonably warm, and without a hint of wind. It had to let up sometime, right? We drove home under a pearly blue sky, and when we stopped for lunch, Skyla and Weston changed into shorts and flip-flops.

  It’s time to start cooking. When you order “fried clams” at most any restaurant these days, you’ll likely get a basket of previously frozen, dough-covered pebbles of vaguely clam-flavored mystery meat. These bear about as much resemblance to a home-cooked razor clam as Vienna sausages do to a prime, aged porterhouse. Which is to say, razor clams are something special.

  I rinse the clams again with great care – a single, crunching grain of sand can ruin it for me – and place them on paper towels to drain. Using a heavy wooden meat-tenderizing hammer that Bob Dawson made for me, I give each siphon section, the chewiest part of the clam, a few shots to soften it up. Weston asks to take over the hammering procedure, but thinking of our countertop, his fingers, and my fingers, none of which would benefit from tenderizing, I redirect him to scrambling eggs for the breading.

  Once the clams have been pounded, our preparation is the same as for oysters: I lightly season the clams with garlic salt and Lawry’s, roll them in a flour-cornmeal mix, give them a quick dip in Weston’s beaten eggs, and finish with panko. Then I drop them into a heavy pan filled with a third of an inch of peanut oil and flip them when the bottom side turns golden brown. A light sprinkle of kosher salt when they come out of the pan, and it’s almost impossible to wait until the clams cool to eat them. I invariably burn my tongue “making sure they’re okay” before serving the family.

  This time, though, I’m going to be patient. While I wait for the first batch to cool, I look around at the vast collection of soaked and sand-covered waders, jackets, boots, and hats hanging near the woodstove. I remember thinking last night, at the moment our final lantern blew out, nobody’s stupid enough to be out here in this. I remind myself to pay attention to the weather next time, learn something, be smarter.

  Stacy and the kids come into the kitchen and we gather around the rack of cooling clams for a family sampling. With the second batch, we will sit down to our real dinner, but these first ones, well, who can wait for plates and utensils? We’ll eat with our hands, standing in the kitchen. Weston and Skyla each grab a tender foot piece (their preferred part) and reach for another before they’re done with the first. Stacy sinks her teeth into one of the big bodies and closes her eyes. I crunch into my first bite of crisp crust and sweet, clean ocean flavor. We should have known better. But I’m glad we didn’t.

  PRIUS ENVY

  Outside the local organic food store, it takes me three tries to squeeze my old Montero into the tiny parking space. I am wedged between a biodiesel Volkswagen and a shiny new Prius. I open my door slowly to avoid dinging the glossy Toyota paint, crane my neck, and slide carefully out. At this moment, a stylish fleece-and-Gore-Tex-clad woman exits the store with two bags of groceries, walks to the Prius, and pauses before getting in. I catch her eye, expecting a thank-you for being so careful, or at least a nod. But no. She looks at me, looks at my 19-year-old SUV, then wrinkles her nose and shakes her head in withering disapproval.

  Perhaps during the manic days of summer fishing, or the hurly-burly autumn harvest, I wouldn’t even notice such things. But it’s 38 degrees outside, a light, misty rain has been falling since I can’t remember when, and at 4:17 in the afternoon, it’s already dark. Winter. A time when small incidents like this take root in your brain, and the long nights provide ample hours in which to turn them around and examine them from different angles. If you’re not careful, you can ruminate yourself right into insomnia.

  I want to do the right thing. I really do. As a fisherman, forager, and father of two young children, of course I want to do what’s right. I would like to drive a hybrid, live in a house built from recycled materials, eat only organic, sustainable food, and act as a responsible steward for our planet. But as I am finding, unless you have pretty deep pockets and plenty of time on your hands, that’s a lot easier said than done. It’s even tougher to accept that “doing what’s right,” might require some real sacrifice, especially where recreation is concerned. So, like many who aspire to do better by Mother Earth, when faced with the everyday realities of life, I rationalize. It’s the only way to get a good night’s sleep.

  Take my car, for example. It might be old and beat up (I recently had to pull weeds growing out of the window sills), but it’s perfect for hauling kids, camping equipment, clam gear, and crab pots, and the high ground clearance and four-wheel drive make it possible to launch our boat on steep ramps and soft beaches. It’s no F250 when it comes to moving large quantities of firewood, but if I take out the kid seats and stuff it to the ceiling, I can make do. It gets about 18 miles per gallon – not bad for a mid size SUV – but apparently that’s not enough to ward off dirty looks in the parking lot.

  Hell yeah, I’d like to drive a shiny new Prius. Ideally, I’d have one for grocery shopping (especially at the organic food store), taking the kids to soccer, and other gear-free errands. Of course, I’d still need an SUV for everything else. And while we’re at it, why not throw in that F250 for hauling wood? Trouble is, I spend so much time fishing and chasing the kids around, I really don’t have the financial wherewithal to be a two-car guy, let alone a three. Thus, the beater Montero.

  So here comes my rationalization: Since I work from home and don’t commute, if I traded in my car for something more fuel efficient, it’s a pretty sure bet the SUV’s new owner would drive it more than I do. In other words, the old Montero would still be on the road burning more gas than it does now. Even if I could afford to just scrap it, there are issues of landfill and waste to consider.

  And what about the new car? It takes significant amounts of energy, raw materials, and transportation to build a Prius – or any new car, for that matter. If I bought one, I’d be on the hook for the new car’s manufacturing footprint and fuel use as well as the emissions from someone else driving my old car. So…by keeping the Montero and driving it as little as possible, I’m really doing what’s best for the earth. At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.

  Then there’s the house. Several years ago, with Weston on the way and our living situation already cramped, Stacy and I decided to build a pretty significant addition to our old home in the woods. Spurred on by a growing awareness of human impact on the environment – not to mention the ubiquitous “sustainable building” media buzz – we started with all kinds of idealistic thoughts on how to make it an earth-friendly project.

  Turns out, being green on a budget is an uphill battle only Sisyphus could fully appreciate. Recycled wood products? Be prepared to pay through the teeth, as the cost of labor to strip, clean, and re-mill old lumber far outweighs what it takes to simply chop down trees. Wha
t about reusing existing windows and flooring? Again, it’s far cheaper to dump the old and start from scratch with factory-fresh stuff. New windows are also much more energy efficient, but do you gain enough to make up for the manufacturing and transportation? The mind reels. How about a tankless, on-demand hot water heater? Get ready to hear “they don’t work for crap” from a lot of plumbers. It goes on and on. You push the “green” boulder up the hill and the force of reality rolls it right back down.

  I don’t blame those who work in the trades. They’d rather do what they’ve always done because they need to count on the results. With their names and bank accounts on the line, few can afford to experiment. So unless you find a contractor who specializes in sustainable building, it’s going to be tough. And if you do, there’s a good chance it’s going to be expensive.

  Still, we did find a little good news. Sustainable bamboo flooring is tough, beautiful, and relatively affordable. It might not be recycled, but at least you aren’t cutting down slow-growing hardwoods or old-growth fir to walk on. Of course, I don’t know how shipping bamboo from Asia and, even worse, trucking it from the port of entry to my home factor into the whole equation, but examining every possible angle is a sure recipe for sleeplessness.

  That hot water heater? After dozens of calls and meetings with five different plumbers, we finally found a guy who was in love with the Rinnai tankless water heaters from Japan. He told us that the negative reports about this kind of appliance (lack of reliability and insufficient power to heat our cold Northwest groundwater) were based on other, better-known brands. He would sell, install, and stand behind the Rinnai without reservation. It cost about twice what you’d pay for a traditional water heater, which keeps 50 gallons of water hot even when you’re not using it. In theory, by heating only what we needed, when we needed it, the Rinnai would save us enough in energy costs to pay the difference within two years. Remarkably, it has.