Salmon For All

A Columbia River salmon swam out into the Pacific near Astoria and on his way to the normal Alaskan hunting grounds of his ancestors he took a wrong turn, or got caught in a freak current, and was swept away from the cold waters he had known. Suddenly he found himself around the bright corals and clear waters of Micronesia. He blissfully darted around paradise before a hook yanked him back to reality – well, death really.

OK, so I know that didn’t happen, but how else can I explain the cold hard fact that I ate delicious, fire-toasted, pink and flaky, oh-so-succulent salmon on a Saturday evening on a coral atoll thousands of miles away from the Northwest?
It came from Oregon, and it was fresh, not frozen.

A week before my fortunate stumble into taste-bud heaven, my friend Dan and I had been talking about what our first meal would be when we stepped off the plane into the US again. Hamburgers? Indian food? Italian? Nope, strike all of those; we both said that our meal would have something to do with the Oregon specialty of top-notch salmon.

“I am going to go home, get a sweet cut of Chinook, and grill is up with some onions and a little salt and eat until I fall asleep,” Dan said. And I agreed, nothing sounded better than that.

Alas, our dream was at the very least four months off. That meant four months of ramen, expired Cheerios and 99-cent-a-pound potatoes. Enough to make you want to cut your taste buds out in other words.

Then, God, luck, random chance or whatever other greater power you hitch your life to, decided to step in.

Some friends and I spent the day down at the bridge surfing. I was on shore taking photos when some men came out to watch. We got to talking and they told me that after we were done, we should cross the street and join in a little barbeque they were having. When Dan and company exited the water, exhausted with arms like noodles from paddling so much, free food was the perfect cure.

At the house we were having a few beers when a man drove up with a huge big-eyed tuna in the back of his truck. The thing was every bit as long as 5’11” Dan and so heavy that he could only halfway pick it up.

“This is a Marshallese specialty,” the man said. “If you bought this in New York, you’d be paying big bucks.”

We ate the amazing sashimi that the man skillfully cut from beside the spine of the monstrous fish and thought our luck could not get much better; that is until the man took out his cooler carefully packed with cuts of salmon practically glowing in their sunset-pink hue.

Our jaws dropped.

“Brought this back with me from Portland last week,” the man said. “In a cooler. I would have had more, too, but they took about half from me in Hawaii.”

The rest of the night was spent in a food-induced delirium as we picked our way between two rare kinds of fish.
I had no idea you could check a cooler of fresh fish on a Continental flight. I guess I know now what one of my pieces of luggage will be on the way back.

A big-eyed tuna took a wrong turn East of the Marshall Islands, got caught in a fluke current and found himself swept away from the warm waters he’d known and into the silt-laden, muddy waters where the Columbia river meets the Pacific Ocean. He joyously used his superior speed to feed on the smelt before a hook yanked him back to reality – or death.