Boulders and cobbles were piled beside the ancient clam gardens. On the beach they mark gardens and also pens where fish were herded for capture. More than a century has passed since the gardens were kept and wave action has been constant. Would the patterns survive?
The reason people in India can see the Himalaya again is because of Covid 19. The whole country has shut down; pollution plummeted; skies have cleared. Before us rises a possible future.
The onset and turbulent passage of Seattle’ influenza epidemic matches our present experience, and its history may serve as a route-guide. The "Spanish" Flu orphaned Emmett Watson and Mary McCarthy who, arguably, became writers as a result.
One might wonder why Native stories wished for more rain in damp, dark Seattle, but spring floods signal salmon to return to spawning rivers where people caught them.
Puget Sound Salish hangs on by a thread, thanks to efforts to preserve it. Unfortunately, when a language dies the ways its speakers experienced the world vanish with it.
A proposal in Vancouver, B.C. could be "the most dramatic statement of urban Indigenous presence in any Canadian city – a new district called Senakw, after the long-displaced village."