That place: Every angler has one

Most every angler has that place – that one lake, river, pond or coastal port where they don't just go to fish but to be completely absorbed into its essence. When you go there, yes, it is to fish. But it's more than that. It's a way to reach back, almost tangibly, and settle into the vivid joy of other times. Maybe it's the stubborn way places like that often refuse to change that enables that connection. Maybe it's because some memories – the really good ones – don't just stay with you; they also stay behind and become part of a place, like the ruts in the road that lead to it. You've left a piece of yourself there. A root, of sorts. You're compelled to visit again, if only to check in on that part of you that stayed behind. I don't mean to sound too hippy-dippy, but if you fish, I think you know what I mean. Even if you don't, I'll bet you still do. For me, that place is a rusty, isolated little village clinging to a rocky, forested edge of Washington state. It's called Sekiu, which is pronounced like the letters C and Q and means, in the language of the first people there, the Clallam, "calm waters." Sekiu sits about 20 miles south, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, from Vancouver Island, fastened like a barnacle to Clallam Bay, which itself is gouged out just enough from the rugged coastal shoreline that the Strait's relentless westerlies rush by harmlessly on all but the most stormy days. Sekiu, indeed. Sekiu itself is this: three or four small resorts with plywood-paneled cabins and rooms – none of which have changed since the 1960s. The small harbor is protected by a jetty splattered white, Jackson Pollock-style, by seagull poo. Inside, there are about three dozen docks that seem perpetually slick from mist, rain, fish slime or all three. There's a warm diner called The Breakwater. It's in a pre-fab building across from a fish-cleaning station and serves pancakes, hamburgers and Rainier beer. Moss grows on every roof. And the air has a certain … funk … that I would say is one part ocean, one part Olympic National Forest and one part all the fish guts that have been cleaned and tossed into the harbor over the previous six decades. I know what you're thinking, but it is not unpleasant. Granted, a guy wouldn't want to dab it on before a big date. But Coalinga smells worse. This is the place my dad and older brother learned to salmon fish, back in the 1960s with a neighbor named Mac who looked like the coach from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. No, really. Mac was nicer though. It's where I learned to fish in the 1970s, where I took my high school buddies in the 1980s and my sons in the 2000s. It's where summer sunrises can be downright operatic and fall fog is the color of lint and thick as a sweater. It's a place where orcas hunt, freighters steam and, once, a massive elephant seal with black eyes the size of softballs startled us by popping up beside our boat as if to ask directions. I've caught 15-pound coho salmon there that tore off so much line from my reel I thought they might reach Canadian waters. I've netted 30-pound king salmon that put a hitch in your breath at the first chrome glimpse of them beneath the waves. I have rolled my eyes at my dad there, cracked jokes with my brother there, drank Rainiers with those high school buddies and best of all, watched with a pride I cannot describe as my now-grown boys traded catching and netting each other's fish the last time I went, a few years back now. It's getting time to go again. These places. If you have one – again, whether you fish or not – you are blessed. We never feel we visit enough. But our memories are still there, always: ethereal roots in rich soil, a part of us, living rent-free and patiently awaiting our next arrival.