Ross Anderson

Ross Anderson is a founding member of the Rainshadow Journal collective. He retired to Port Townsend after 30 years of journalism at the Seattle Times.

Muscle Up! (It’s a Long Row to Alaska)

Famously, participants will not have engines – none whatsoever. Their 750 mile voyage to Ketchikan, Alaska, will be powered by some combination of wind, muscle and no small amount of human endurance and ingenuity.

George Vancouver and the Puget Sound Maps

Occasionally I’ll check his recorded longitude-latitude coordinates against my GPS, and they’re astonishingly close. Some of his South Pacific charts were used by the Navy as recently as WWII – 150 years after they were drawn.

Five Ways Up the Inside Passage

From Seattle’s Fishermens Terminal to Port Townsend and Bellingham Bay, the boatyards and marinas are abuzz with power sanders and arc welders, the smell of varnish fumes and sawdust and diesel oil – fishermen and boaters gearing up for another voyage up the Inside Passage to Alaska.

Walla Walla Hits the Ground Running (So What Would it Take to Sink Her?)

Over the past 70-plus years, state ferries have carried hundreds of millions of passengers on perhaps 10 million trips. And yet, across seven decades, not a single life has been lost in a ferry accident. But if a ferry were to sink, here's how it might happen...

“Sure, I’ll Sign That”: How Cal Ripken Jr. Demanded a Fantasy Trade

Each spring, as we approach Opening Day, I’m reminded that baseball is about a weird concoction of reality and fantasy, physics and psychics, curve balls and called strikes, nine-digit...

(Not) Just for the Halibut: The Economics of a Popular Fish

This is a supply-and-demand issue, but it’s also a case study of the complexities of managing a valuable public resource.

Paper, Plastic or Cloth? What’s Best for the Environment?

Some years ago, I spent a couple of days calling the experts, asking which is the Path to Virtue? Paper or plastic?

Critical Mass

Our brains work differently. Scientists are specialists who know a lot about a few things. Journalists are generalists who know a little about a lot of things.

A Northwest Night Before Christmas

The crab pots were hung and the crabbers reposed Since Dungeness season was finally closed. The children were snuggled as if in a coma Induced perhaps by the pulp mill’s aroma.

Puget Sound This Weekend: King Tides and Climate Change

The sound will bulge to more than 1,000 square miles. Beaches will all but disappear. Waves on Elliott Bay may slosh onto piers and ferry ramps will flatten.

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