By MARGARET HEFFELFINGER

For The Beachcomber

A creek ran through my grandmother’s front yard, and in the fall it was jam-packed full of salmon, swimming hard against the current. They seemed pretty big to me, all battered and ragged with their hooked noses. There were plenty of dead ones floating backwards, sort of ghostly white, eyes staring at nothing. We were sternly warned to stay out of the rose garden that edged the creek while we were busy staring at the salmon.

If we didn’t get our fill of salmon at my grandmother’s, we could go over to the section of the creek that ran in front of the Masonic Hall. The lawn was up here, and the creek was down there, so you had to be more careful not to fall in while you were leaning over to touch them, which you did (touch and fall in). Behind Neil’s Pharmacy was where the creek was so shallow they could hardly swim. So maybe you’d try to grab one just for fun. Bad boys threw rocks at them and got in trouble. It was an event you could count on — the salmon, the boys and the trouble.

Last week, when I was talking to my brother, he told me the salmon were swimming up the highway over in Hoodsport. “Why?” I asked. He reminded me they always just head on up 101 when the river floods across the road. I remember a couple of years ago we drove to the Hoodsport hatchery for a look. So many fish had crammed into the mouth of the river as they migrated out of the canal that they were flopping on the beach and all over the place. People were grabbing them and loading them onto a local food bank truck as fast as they could.

“C’mon, hurry,” someone yelled. “These are just going to rot here, so grab yourself a couple.” We raced down to the hardware store to buy a license so we could put two of the beached fish in our trunk, because the game warden was standing around.

My mom grew up over there in Potlatch, and she swears she could walk across the creeks on the backs of the salmon when she was a girl. They fed the chum to their dogs and cats, and so did everyone else. They put them whole into the garden for fertilizer, and the dogs promptly dug them up. Her idea of fish fertilizer is different from mine, but we both know the smell.

Even though those creeks aren’t like that now, all full of those tattered, worn-out fish, I saw it, and I won’t forget it. I’m hoping that’s what my kid will say about orca whales when he’s grown up, maybe with a kid of his own.

I’m hoping he will explain how, right around the fall and then on New Year’s, we would sometimes look up from our breakfast table and there they would be, swimming and splashing and playing right in our front yard.

Once at night we heard them blowing as they passed in the dark. Once we let him be late to school because they came just as we were walking out the door to the bus. And more than once when we were walking the dog at the lighthouse, they came around the corner of Point Robinson so close you felt as if you could reach out and pat them on the back. No matter how often you’d seen those whales, you almost couldn’t believe it when you saw them again.

But you did see them, and you’ll never forget it. It’s good to know fantastic things still happen and leave you with memories not even growing up can mine away.

— Margaret Heffelfinger, a writer and gallery owner, lives on Vashon with her husband and son.