Nordic Joe's Seattle Snorkel Guide

My story started in Arkansas where a hearty Norwegian constitution met wilting 120 degree heat day after day.  It moved from there eventually to other parts farther north until at last I arrived in the temperate haven of Seattle.  I was drawn instantly by the lively scent of the Puget Sound to fall into it on may occasions.  If Freud is to be trusted and there are truly no accidents, then we may peer at my own frozen figure moments before impacting the water.  The beer that careens overhead was but a tool to cast aside my latent inhibitions.  The cell-phone that is soon to be ruined is the tether to the masochistic discipline of daily toil at a computer keyboard.  The waiting cold is my place of stillness and calm and soon I will be plunged into her again.

Or maybe I just grew up on dry land and can’t disembark worth a damn.

However you want to look at it, I can’t stay out of the Sound or stop talking about it.  That’s how I’ve been my entire life:  drawn to the water and the mysterious things that live in it.  When I first moved out here, I asked everyone I knew:  Hey what kind of stuff is in there?  They would usually shrug and say something like “lead, mercury, algae, damn sea lions…”  I knew there had to be more.  I couldn’t wait for a ferry without laying on the dock and peering down into water where I could see schools of something large darting about, huge white anemones with odd creatures crawling over them, and the continuing wonder that endures in the moments just after you hear a large splash and turn in time to see only ripples.  So I had this idea all the time of getting down into it..and swam there a time or two.  I suppose I didn’t get serious until the leg surgery.

The first time I fell into the sound, was just before a doctor’s visit to see why I was having so much trouble moving my legs and so much pain whenever I got moving.  It turned out I had a pretty advanced case of chronic acquired compartment syndrome and had to have the fascia on both legs in the anterior and latteral compartments released.   Release sounds much more pleasant than it was.  My recovery was long and crappy.  I spend the hottest weeks of the year laying on my back and sweating into wounds that ran nearly the length of my legs.  The pain was one thing, but I truly can not stand heat at all.   The combination of immobility, 100 degree indoor heat, and the drugs had me in a serious funk.  That was the first time I found myself thinking about floating face-down in the sound.  It seemed too stupid for words that just blocks away was the best way cool down you could imagine…a hypothermic blanket of cool that would send me from gasping for air to holding myself in shivers.  If only I was allowed to get off that couch, I knew what I would have done…jumped right in and let the currents, like leaches draining bad humors, take my excess heat away and leave me cool and calm.

Eventually the legs healed, kinda, and I gave jumping in the sound a few goes on hot summers since.   But I wasn’t serious until Hawaii.

I’ll be brief here:  I got married = a good excuse to go on a trip to Hawaii.  Snorkeled every day and LOVED it.  Molokini was the best 50$ I have ever spent in my life.  Yet every day I went out into the warm blue, I wondered about the seas at home and what they held.  Each exotic wonder of the tropical world begged the question: how does this compare to the Puget Sound? So  I bought my own mask and fins and snorkel instead of renting with the plan to return and find out.

And on my first week back, I began asking questions:  Do I really need a wetsuit?   How much does the temperature vary?  Is it legal to snorkel here?  Where do you go?  What is there to see?

Nobody I asked knew a thing about it.  I think most people thought I wasn’t very serious or didn’t realize what cold water meant.  People felt a continual need to tell me “It’s not Hawaii” and “You will see more diving”.  Though some outdoor enthusiasts and divers had a little to share – they all knew a wetsuit was ‘probably required’, nobody really knew how much of a wetsuit I needed, how the currents played after an hour on the surface, what visibility would be like on different types of coast.  Should I stick to rocks or sand?   How much garbage and line is out there?  I would later come to find out that what most people thought about snorkeling the Puget sound was completely wrong.  But first, I had to find out myself.