"When the tide is out, the table is set."

Old Coastal Salish Indian saying

 Photo BC Kelp  http://www.bckelp.com/BCKelp-Photos.html

Walking along the ocean shoreline, does your mouth water at the sight of seaweed? Mine didn’t until I met Jesse Longacre, a California naturalist who was intimately familiar with the Sonoma and Mendocino coast and who shared his passion vigorously. The T-shirt he wore on his guided tours of the coast stated that, “The best things in life are slimy,” and when you were with him, you believed it.

Jesse died too young. He was at home in his favorite chair, watching television, and one of those massive events (Stroke? Heart attack?) took him out. He was massively missed not only by his children and their mother but also by the many women he had loved (so many that even his children laughed about it at his memorial service) and his dozens of friends and admirers.

Putting in place a fitting tribute to Jess took years. The memorial was to be a stretch of path on the Mendocino Coast, with a small brass plaque commemorating him. The challenge was that the coastline was under government stewardship, and at that time, coastal features could be named only for Native Americans. (Today they can’t be named for anyone.) Jesse’s friends were not, however, quitters. They obtained a special for-Jesse-only exemption from the tribes who could make that decision and who explained it by saying Jesse had contributed so much to the understanding and preservation of the coast that a coastal path ought to be named for him. The path is not long, but it is beautiful, and Jesse had walked it many times.

The memorial service that marked installation of the new brass plaque on a small boulder at the beginning of Jesse Longacre Walk was informal and loving. We sat in the sea-meadow grasses facing the plaque and the ocean. After those who had fought for Jesse’s memorial told their story and his family members spoke, everyone who wanted to share a memory of Jesse told their stories. My favorite Jesse story was that he had said if he were reincarnated he wanted to come back as a turkey vulture because they keep the beautiful landscape clean. These bald scavengers, with their keen sense of smell and amazing eyesight, have been honored in various mythologies but are not always appreciated now. To this day, when I see a vulture soaring, I sometimes greet it with, “Hi, Jesse!”

Backtracking in time: My introduction to Jesse was through my friend Marsha, who invited a small group of us to hire Jesse to lead us on an edible-seaweed collecting walk along the Sonoma coast near Jenner and then to return with us to her home to cook and eat our seaweed. Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled by the idea. Having grown up on the East Coast and settled on the West Coast, I appreciated seaweeds as relics from the deep. And my young son, like so many kids before and since, had enjoyed swinging bull whip kelp around in the air. But seaweed is algae. Eat it? Really?

Too curious to refuse, I signed on. Our little group met Jesse at the beach. He wore his best-things-in-life-are-slimy T-shirt. In my mind’s eye, I remember that walk as comprising only seaweed, stones, seashells, damp sand, water, and shoes, because with Jesse as leader, one focused downward. We collected the seaweed he said was safe to eat and left the seaweed he said wasn’t, so I suppose you could say we put our lives in his hands. He warned us that after this walk, we should not collect and eat seaweed on our own, because not all seaweed is tasty and some may be unkind to you digestive system..

My next memory of that day is walking into Marsha’s kitchen and seeing Jesse at her counter pounding an abalone steak with strength that even Samson might have envied. Jesse explained that he had been “diving for abs” and would cut the abalone steak, after he finished tenderizing it, into bite-size pieces. While he pounded, the rest of us rinsed seaweed and cut or tore it into edible pieces. We also sliced onions, tomatoes, and green peppers, to add to the skillet. It was probably wine or beer in which our stew simmered.

When at last we gathered around Marsha’s long table, we viewed the fruits of our labor skeptically. It’s one thing to collect and cook seaweed. It’s another to eat it. After the first tentative bites, however, we wolfed down our delectable seafood-abalone stew, sopping up the juice with crusty French bread from a local bakery. Among memorable meals, I rank this one with the best in Paris, Rome, New York, and Seattle.

I’d like to report that after that novel experience, I learned to dive for abs. But I’m a scuba diver who won’t go near cold water. Abalone diving off the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts requires wet suits for warmth and divers don’t use scuba equipment. On dry land, however, I happily accepted from an ab diver the gift of an abalone shell, which I used decoratively on the kitchen sink to hold sponges and scrub pads, where it cheers me up whenever I contemplate sponging or scrubbing.

Today, during abalone-diving season, divers may harvest only a limited number of abalone and are not allowed to sell them. Their pay-off is fun and adventure. But the growing number both of legal ab divers and of abalone poachers has reduced the abalone population. The California Department of Fish and Game is among law enforcement agencies cracking down on poachers. And black abalone have been added to the endangered species list.

To return to edible seaweed, what brought back memories of Jesse Longacre’s  expertise was an announcement in the Orcas Island paper, Island Sounder,  that  “Jennifer Hahn, writer, illustrator, wilderness guide, and naturalist will teach how to spot the ‘food at your feet’ as well as the culture and cuisine of shoreline edibles."

Jennifer Hahn, contributed photo

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/sanjuans/isj/lifestyle/104112063.html

Hanh is the author of Pacific Feast: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging Cuisine  and  Pacific Coast Foraging Guide: 45 Wild Foods From Beach, Field and Forest. She says bull kelp can be pickled and that Turkish towel seaweed thickens Chocolate Ocean Pudding. News to me and perhaps to you.