Hood Canal: nature on the half-shell

It's one of Washington's hidden jewels, a fishhook-shaped natural fjord dividing the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. It's a deep breath, a moment of silence. That place you want to run to, to get away from it all? It's the Hood Canal.

But while it's no secret to locals, who cite the glacially carved waterway's natural features — mountains, forest, wildlife, sunsets, water — as their reasons for living here, what might stand out to visitors is something else entirely: A sense of utter calm.

At one time, travelers to the Pacific Coast got there on Highway 101 via Shelton or the Bremerton ferry, then north and west through Port Angeles. But with the advent of the 1.5-mile Hood Canal Bridge, that dynamic fell into disarray and the route — which some call "The Lost Loop" — into obscurity.

Starting in 1961, travelers could take the shorter ferry to Kingston and drive toward Port Angeles, bypassing the west side of the canal entirely. Before long, Highway 101 and the west side of Washington's Hood Canal had become an all-but-forgotten road.

These days, in some places, the air is so still and quiet that each sound becomes part of a naturally rhythmic symphony — the caw of a bird, the bark of a dog, the chatter of swimming kids half a mile away. All along the route, roadside spots beg to be enjoyed for their simple yet stunning views.

"That's what I was captured by," says University of Washington oceanographer Jan Newton, who has spent years of research in the area. "Any time humans are in a landscape where there's a strong scale of the land and you feel very little, you feel really special. It's like being in a theater — you see so much in front of you."

The canal starts near Belfair, southeast of Bremerton. For 15 miles, it drifts southwest before hooking northward at the so-called Great Bend; in the process, it passes lush Alderbrook Resort and the densely packed, south shore cabins of the well-to-do near the towns of Union and Potlatch before reaching down-home, touristy Hoodsport.

"Once you get into Hoodsport, you're really on the west side," says Joe Mentor, who has vacationed on the canal's north end since boyhood. "It's a little less affluent, and people are shell-fishing more. [It's] a more blue-collar kind of environment."

In all, the north-to-south portion extends 50 miles along eccentric tidelands and rugged, oyster-dotted beaches in the shadow of historic timber country. U.S. Highway 101 hugs the canal's western shore on a hem of land adjoining Olympic National Forest and Park, past clear-cuts and hamlets with names straight out of Oz — Lilliwaup, Hamma Hamma — toward Quilcene.

Named for British Admiral Lord Samuel Hood in 1792, the canal is the setting for a grand-scale charm bracelet of tranquil state parks, fed by major rivers such as the Skokomish, Dosewallips, Duckabush and Big Quilcene.

In the early 20th century, many traveled through here via steamship. Homesteaders grew their own produce and raised chickens, and towns with one-room schoolhouses formed around fishing and logging operations. The region is now known for its shellfish bounty. Rivers hustle Olympic runoff into brackish waters, providing ideal growing conditions for oysters, clams and mussels while fueling hatcheries and local appetites.

"There's something very spiritual about being a hunter-gatherer, having to go out and collect your food and eat what you just collected," says Mentor, who has a cabin near Quilcene — home to the landmark Whistling Oyster Bar — and a knack for treating oyster-shell cuts. "Out there, if you want to, all you need to bring is some ketchup and horseradish and some beer, and you're pretty much set after that."

Commerce and the ecosystem, then, are sensitive to climactic and environmental changes. In 2002, 2003 and then again in 2006, thousands of fish perished because of low oxygen levels in the canal, especially in the poorly circulating south end. Bottom fishing was prohibited. Earlier this year, researchers determined that septic systems feeding nitrogen into the canal's southern end were part of a complex chain of contributory events.

Which makes some wonder whether that's why crabbing is so lousy this year. "People are struggling all day to get one little keeper," says Gary Florek of Hoodsport's G&M Hardware. "Maybe they're running out of food down there."

Residents care deeply about the area, knowing they depend on it economically, aesthetically or for recreation. They debate the merits of restoring roads washed out by inclement weather, the economics of tourism at odds with the values of environmentalism.

During slow winter months, the growing number of locals keep businesses afloat. Those with roots here are known for their hardiness, while a long history of outdoor recreation activities — sailing, water skiing, diving — has spawned vacation homes that are becoming retirement homes for those looking for less hustle and bustle.

Its residents, says Dan Hannafious, assistant director of the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, are people "who can appreciate the call of the osprey, who can appreciate the seasons, who can appreciate that there's cougar and deer and bear that live in their backyard."

But for visitors, a simple day's drive holds plenty of random sights — beaches full of barnacle-encrusted rocks and oyster-shell scatterings; crusty old-timers clambering over the overpass to fish in the Skokomish River; the rivulet-carved terrain of the tidelands. And on a clear day, the spectacular views atop Mount Walker — between Brinnon and Quilcene — include the Seattle skyline.

Outside Brinnon, residents are torn over the high-end destination resort and golf course planned near Pleasant Harbor, which leads one to think that even little things must be enjoyed before they're gone.

"I was near Dabob Bay once in a little antique store, and I found something I liked," Newton says. "I came back a month later and it wasn't there anymore, and the woman working there said, 'If you ever find anything you like in a little place like this, you better get it when you got it.' "

The same could be said of this route, one not so much forgotten as pocketed away for safekeeping.

"It's God's country," says Ke Bruce-Edwards of Quilcene's Peninsula Foods, "Home of the biggest ice cream cone in the Olympic Peninsula."

"You come across that bridge and look up into those mountains, and you know you're home."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com