My Story: Community Care, Conservation, and Culverts

Gig Harbor, WA

The Landscape

I have always measured time with the run of the salmon. I know that fall has come when the smell of rotting fish floats gently on the wind as salmon make the difficult journey back to the Harbor to spawn. As a child, I spent hours on the banks of the creek near my dad’s house, watching the salmon power upstream. My brothers and I used to wade in the water and help the fish move over obstacles, betting on which salmon would make it to the top first. Donkey Creek was a haven for nature in the middle of our rapidly expanding town. The salmonberries still grow thick around the stream, hiding their precious fruit with sharp thorns. Salmonberries have always been the first plant to flower in early Spring, a sign that life will soon return to our little creek.

In the Summer, I would brave the thorny brambles and gorge myself on the berries, begging my brothers to lift me up to reach the salmon-colored fruit. My dad and I would walk the trail along the creek’s edge, past the Harbor’s history museum, and down to the head of the Harbor. A 12ft tall totem stands at the place where the fresh creek meets the salt of the small Harbor. The totem called “Our Fisherman, Our Guardian” stands watch over the Harbor known as “txʷaalqəł” by the Puyallup tribe, who have inhabited the Harbor for centuries. The totem rests on the former txʷaalqəł village, only 300 meters from the salmon spawning site. My dad, who considers himself something of a local historian, used to tell me about the Puyallup tribe and the salmon berries and how the native peoples would make a tart glaze with the berries to spread over their salmon feasts each fall. 

Growing up in a small fishing community, my life has been spent on the water. On sunny days, I carry my paddleboard down to the txʷaalqəł estuary at the bottom of Donkey Creek. Boats line every part of the Harbor’s shore with old fishermen’s netsheds still standing on the docks. When I was young, my family used to kayak through the Harbor, looking fondly upon the old fishermen’s cottages that stood on the Harbor’s beaches. When I paddle now, I can’t help but gawk at the ornate mansions that have taken over the cottage's land. Instead of familiar faces on fishing vessels, I look up at white yachts that tower over me on my paddleboard. The feelings of community and oneness that were once so prevalent in the Harbor have become scarce.

Every year since I can remember, my family would paddle down to Jersich Dock for the Blessing of the Fleet. Jerisch has always been the heart of the Harbor, the place where life happens. People would come in by boat, foot, and wheel to wish our local fishermen a safe journey and a plentiful catch. We would dance on boats until sunset, spraying water guns at neighbors and throwing water balloons at the departing ships. Harbor seals would swim around us as we celebrated, poking their heads up to watch the festivity and jumping on paddle boards, much to the crowd's delight. The fishing vessels would blow their horns in unison, a final goodbye as they followed the salmon out to sea. This year, the crowd was filled with unfamiliar faces as fewer fishermen than ever departed to the Sound. Much like childhood, the feeling of community has a habit of slipping away with time. 

However, one place in the Harbor has remained untouched by the surging development and swarming crowds of tourists. A lonely peninsula that calls for familiar friends to sit upon its shore and watch the world go by. On quiet days, I would set off across the Harbor in my kayak, maneuvering around the yachts and party boats to get to the quiet opening of the bay. Lighthouse Point juts out of a quiet part of our bustling town, gently watching over the narrow passage that carries boaters out to the open Sound. A squat lighthouse watches over the passage, its broken bulb and rusty windows contrast the glitz and glamour that's taken over so much of the Harbor.

On hot summer days, I would drag my kayak up to the side of the little lighthouse and take cover in its shade. The wooden slats feel like they’ve been made for my back as I recover from the short journey to the Point. Sticky hot sand clumps between my toes as I sift through the shells and rocks that litter the Point’s shore. I tuck broken mussel shells into my pocket, a reminder of the sea birds that have used this land to hunt. When the pink in my cheeks begins to lessen, I’d brave the sun once again and run across to the driftwood logs that bracket the shore. The open Sound stretches out into the distance, seemingly endless from my little spot on the Point. Mt. Rainier stands tall above the open water, a gentle giant that keeps watch over the people of Washington. I’ve always felt so comforted by the mountains’ constant presence in my life. When I’ve been completely wrapped in uncertainty, I’ve looked up at Mt. Rainier and felt a sense of protection and calm. How could my small human problems be so significant when Mt. Rainier has been weathering storms for half a million years? 

Just under Mt. Rainier’s massive form is Point Defiance, it sits just across the Sound from Lighthouse Point and marks the entrance to the city of Tacoma. If I brought out my binoculars and zoomed in on Point Defiance, I would see northern fur seals lying along its shore. They mingle with herds of harbor seals that play in the shallow water, showing off for the beach walkers. Those who walk to the very end of the Point Defiance shore will eventually come to the great Narrows Bridge, an iconic symbol of our area. From my perch on Lighthouse Point, I can just see the top of the bridge rising up in the distance. The twin sea green bridges connect the Harbor to the greater Sound, allowing visitors from all over to come into our little town. Next to Lighthouse Point rests the old ferry landing, which was once the only way into the Harbor. Nowadays, the old landing serves only as a reminder of our community's long history on the water. 

When I sit on Lighthouse Point, I often think of the salmon that cycle in and out of our Harbor. They rush out to sea to explore the world, but they always know that the safety of the Harbor is waiting for them when they return. The Harbor protects them from the rough waters, both by the calm environment and by the people who inhabit our town. 

The People

My little adventures to Lighthouse Point would never have been possible without my mom and dad. In the mid-90s, my freshly married parents packed up their lives on the East Coast and moved away from everything they’d ever known. They settled in the small community of Gig Harbor, buying the former mayor’s home just two streets up from the water’s edge. The 100-year-old house had seen the rise of Gig Harbor from a small fishing community to a desirable tourist destination for Seattleites looking for a weekend getaway. During their first week in their new house, they painted the front door a deep red, a color that still remains more than 30 years later. When you ask me to think of home, I would tell you of a red door and the community of characters that colored my childhood.

Franklin Avenue in Gig Harbor, Washington, is an institution where most of the residents spend their entire lives, passing down their homes to their children. My parents were an anomaly, moving into a community of older folks who had long called Gig Harbor their home. My brothers and I became the darlings of the neighborhood, darting between neighbors' homes, indulging in the massive amount of sweets shoved into our hands. We would come home sugar-high with sticky fingers, much to the annoyance of my exhausted mother. Our neighbors became family to us, filling in for our blood family on the East Coast who rarely made the long journey to visit us. We marked our neighborhood's unique connection with familial monikers. The couple in the big white house across the street became Nana Mary and Papa Jim. The single women in the 70s style home behind us became Aunty Lucy and two doors down from us were the constantly kind Aunt Margie and Uncle Lewis. 

Nana Mary plays the bells in the Chapel Hill Church Choir. She leaves notes on your windshield when you park on the public street in front of her home. Without fail, I would find a pestering note on my car, even if I had only stopped at my house across the street for five minutes. Nana Mary is a good Christian woman who has been married a few too many times for it to be classy. She wears her pearls just loose enough to breathe and curls her hair tight so the grey strands fall just above her shoulders. She always dons a floral apron and gardens like the weeds are out to get her. But her garden beds always come down with some disease or another, and her baking is just above inedible. If I had a dollar for every time Nana Mary knocked on our door with her latest baking creation, just for it to be consumed solely by my dad, who likes to play garbage disposal, I’d have enough to buy the big white home she shares with her husband Jim. 

Every Christmas, Nana Mary hosted a Christmas tea for all the women in her community. For years, my mom and I would receive a beautiful invitation in our mailbox, and I would don my puffiest dress and tie my hair with lace ribbons. I’d sit with a filly napkin on my lap and sip hot chocolate out of bone china while the women gossiped around me. I remember the year my parents got divorced, I sat by the mailbox waiting eagerly for our invitation to Christmas tea. But the mailbox remained empty, and I ended up watching out our front window as little girls in puffy dresses were ushered into Nana Mary’s door. 

Despite her faults, Nana Mary cares about people with a fierce conviction that seems to come straight from God. When my brother died and my family fell apart, she met me on the sidewalk with a hug so tight I almost passed out. She was at our door every day with pies, trays of lasagna, and enough cookies to feed a horde of teenage boys. Of course, all of this food was inevitably handed off to my dad, the only person in my family brave enough to eat Nana Mary’s cooking. Nana Mary has always been a study in contradictions; her kindness pours out of her when it’s convenient, and other times she forgets an invitation to Christmas tea because my parents' divorce was seen as an unconscionable action, despite her own past. But even with these contradictions, she is a pillar in the institution of Franklin Avenue, and I can’t imagine my life without her presence just across the street. Holding court with the neighborhood ladies on the sidewalk or walking up and down her garden pulling weeds.

Phil McDonald somehow managed to slide past our neighborhood trend of familial names and has always just been Mr. McDonald to me. He lives with his wife and yappy dog in a squat white house that borders mine. Mr. McDonald is one of the most eclectic men I have ever met. He is a connoisseur of all things old and damaged, taking them in to tinker with. He would buy up rusty motorbikes, used chicken coops, and busted speakers from yard sales and antique stores and fix them up like new. Every day when I walked down the street on my trek to my nearby school, I would find Mr. McDonald in the front yard tinkering with a new find, a for-sale sign perched on the back of his last project. When he saw me walking by, he would always stop his work, often rolling out from under the belly of a rusted-up car. He would pat my back in greeting, invariably leaving a greasy black print on school clothes. He’d ask me about my day as he went back to work, and I would perch on his front steps as I filled him in. 

I’ve never bought anything from Mr. McDonald in my life, but he’s tried to sell me on at least 12 semi-working cars, promising a “family” discount, which was usually about 20 bucks off the several thousand dollar price tag. Every time I turned down his offers, he would turn into a grumpy old man, mumbling about how he would sell me something one of these days. Even though I now live thousands of miles from Franklin Avenue, every time I pull up to my house, Mr. McDonald is there, usually under the body of a barely salvageable vehicle. And he asks me about my day and if I’m looking for a car, like I’m still just coming home from school, but now my school is five states over. 

Aunt Margie’s house was always my safe space as a child. To get to her front door, you have to climb up twisting stone stairs that meander through a beautifully landscaped yard complete with a little waterfall that flows next to the stone steps. She lives two doors down from me, next to the McDonald's, in a beautiful brown home that rises up from the street. In the attic of her home, she has a massive telescope and skylights that span most of the ceiling. My brothers and I would scramble up her stairs, using her telescope to find constellations, making up random names for the configurations of stars that we found. Every Halloween, Aunt Margie would make special goody bags for my brothers and me, filled to the brim with individually tailored sweets and surprises. I remember the pride that I felt trick-or-treating with my friends when I got a special goodie bag from Aunt Margie, and my friends got plain candy. Aunt Margie always had a way of making me feel special and valued. When she was redoing her home many years ago, she put small stones in for the floor of her shower. For a week, I got to run around collecting rocks and brought them to her home, picking out a pattern I liked that is now permanently installed. 

There have been hundreds of times throughout my life that I have run to Aunt Margie’s home to escape. I hid there when my parents were screaming at each other in the kitchen, when my brothers were being especially mean to me, and when I failed my first exam in middle school. Aunt Margie would rub my back, slipping me cookies and orange juice until I calmed down enough to go home. When I think of what it means to be a grandparent, I think of Aunt Margie. She has always been my protector, my advocate, and my safe place. 

The Environmental Challenges

Another one of the community members that deeply shaped my life and my relationship to Gig Harbor is the salmon that call it home. Salmon have always been an iconic symbol of the Pacific Northwest. From the important cultural role they play for the Indigenous peoples of our area to the fishermen who rely on the salmon for their income, they are deeply tied to the history of the region. As a fishing community and a home to the Puyallup Tribe, Gig Harbor has a strong connection to the salmon. Every year, they swim through our Harbor to Donkey Creek at the head of the bay. At the top of the creek sits a salmon spawning site, where hundreds of salmon come to welcome new life into their species. Each Fall for as long as I can remember, I would walk down to Donkey Creek every day to watch as the salmon ran upstream. My family and I would participate in the yearly “Chum Walk,” in which the whole community came together to welcome the salmon home. As a kid, I would see many salmon swimming each day, with hundreds moving up the stream throughout the spawning period. However, in the last few years, I’ve watched as the salmon population has dwindled. Last year, only one salmon was spotted in Donkey Creek, and the year before, there were none.

  For the last century, the salmon in Washington state have been struggling, but in recent years, there has been even more of a decline in their numbers. Salmon are a vital part of the cultural heritage of Washington, and they play an important role in our state's industry. Salmon are also an indicator species, reflecting the health of the environment they live in. In other words, their dwindling numbers show the effects of climate change in our region. The glaciers and snow melt that provide the cool, plentiful streamflows in the Summer season are starting to disappear. These rising water temperatures and lowering streamflows during critical months for salmon spawning are having a significant impact on the health of salmon populations. Young salmon are especially susceptible to changing water temperatures and the lowering levels of oxygen in warmer waters (WSGSRO, 2025). All of these impacts are having a significant effect on the salmon populations native to Gig Harbor; however, our local salmon are facing an even more pressing issue. 

Blocking the path to the Donkey Creek salmon spawning site is a culvert, a pipe that runs underneath roads or construction projects to move water. This culvert acts as a barrier between the spawning site and natural stream flow, with salmon having to jump more than a foot to move into the underground tunnel. Many salmon are not able to make the jump into the tunnel, preventing them from returning to their spawning site, the only place where they are able to spawn. The culvert has blocked the creek path all of my life. I remember watching the salmon attempt to jump into the tunnel as a young child. Meanwhile, my brothers and I would attempt to catch the slippery salmon and toss them into the culvert, climbing up ourselves to walk through the tunnel with the salmon swimming at our feet. 

While the culvert has existed for a long time, the worsening environmental conditions have already decimated salmon populations, lowering the number of salmon that even make it to the culvert at all. For these few salmon who are able to make it back to Donkey Creek, we need to do everything we can to ensure they make it safely to their spawning site. The culvert is a huge barrier to this safe journey, further disadvantaging already struggling salmon. Removing this culvert would be one major step that our community could take to help our local salmon and ensure they continue to spawn in Donkey Creek. 

 There used to be a second culvert on the stream, but a few years ago it was removed, allowing the stream to flow naturally. While this removal has helped to create an easier pathway for the salmon to swim up, the construction involved in the culvert removal has impacted the river sediments. Salmon require river sediments to be close to the same size as their eggs so that the eggs don’t wash away with the run of the creek (WSGSRO, 2025). However, invasive construction can impact the sediments in the stream, preventing salmon from spawning. It’s vital that the existing culvert be removed in a way that does not interfere with the ecological conditions of the stream. The city can require construction teams to conduct environmental impact assessments, implement sediment and erosion control measures, monitor water quality, and ensure a healthy habitat for the salmon throughout the process (WSGSRO, 2025). Removing the remaining culvert in Donkey Creek is a solution, but this process must be done in a way that protects the existing environmental conditions that our salmon rely on.

One of our greatest assets as a community is our deep connection to the environment and wildlife that surrounds us. As a result of this connection, our community has taken proactive environmental action. The ambitious Gig Harbor Climate Action Plan has been so successful because our tight-knit community has a genuine desire to protect nature in our city and around the world. The city council has been working toward removing the culvert, but it has been a long and difficult road to find funding and push the project through. However, the completion of this project is vital to the health of our local salmon. Our community must remain proactive and engaged to ensure that the culvert is removed in the safest way possible. 

Everyone in Gig Harbor has some connection to the salmon, whether that be my Aunty Margie, who would travel down to Donkey Creek with my family to watch the salmon run in the Fall. Or Nana Mary, whose sons follow the salmon out to sea each year on their boats. And Mr. McDonald, too, who sold those boats to Nana Mary’s sons, and who would inevitably find an excuse when they discovered a hole in the boat’s hull. The salmon tie our community together, and it is that tie that must be utilized to save the salmon we all love so much. Otherwise, we will lose a vital part of our social and ecological community. 

The salmon, the people, and the land have played a massive part in my life growing up in Gig Harbor. I am an environmentalist because I grew up surrounded by nature and by people who care about the land they live on. The story of these people and this land is ultimately about caring and about showing up for the members of our community, human and non-human alike. In a world that is increasingly about self over community, it’s more important than ever to dig deeply into our roots. Community care is not only vital for our own personal nourishment, but also for the future of our environmental and societal landscape. 

Sources:

Krell, A. (2021, December 13). It’ll cost many millions to fix salmon barriers in Gig Harbor: Culvert removal ahead. The News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/gateway/g-news/article256291447.html

Washington State Governor's Salmon Recovery Office. (2025). Climate change and salmon recovery. State of Salmon in Washington. https://stateofsalmon.wa.gov/executive-summary/challenges/climate/