As a special treat for my husband’s birthday, I’d gotten tickets to see Abraham Verghese at Benaroya Hall, part of the Seattle Arts and Lectures Series. The author of Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water - two best-selling novels - as well as nonfiction, is one of our literary heroes. 

Mercer Island owes its lushly landscaped lid park to former mayor and city council member, Aubrey Davis (1918 – 2013). In the 1960s, Washington State was eager to complete I-90, fulfilling the vision of a highway connecting all the way from Boston to Seattle. A thirteen-lane freeway slicing through the north end of Mercer Island was proposed. Davis’ mantra was “we don’t want to see it. We don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to smell it.” 

Standing on a concrete bridge in downtown Issaquah, the cold worked its way up from the soles of my feet to my legs, and onwards. Drops of rain clouded my eyeglasses. I struggled to balance an umbrella and hold my cellphone steady as I waited, fearing my fingers would freeze. My mission: photograph a Coho salmon approaching its final hurdle before returning “home” to the salmon hatchery. It was early November, slightly past the height of the salmon run. But two mergansers, bobbing their cinnamon-rust-colored heads as they circled the water, offered a clue that fish were still coming. They were awaiting a feast.