Portland Weather Thwarts My Plans and I Kill a Clam

I had all these great plans for Portland -- climbing Mount St. Helens, climbing Mt. Hood, going kayaking.  But it rained the entire time.  It rained so much that The Oregonian used the headline "Dear rain, you win.  Sincerely, Portland."  It takes a lot of rain to get Oregon's newspaper to say that.

Throughout my trip, it seemed that my plans were thwarted left and right.  We decided we couldn't climb Mount St. Helens because there was so much snow and fog that we might get lost.  Sure enough, this week we found out that a couple of climbers got lost in a storm on the mountain and had to spend the night up there.

Then I wanted to climb Mt. Hood, something I've wanted to do for years, but the weather up there has been so consistently stormy that I had to give up until next year.

In place of my Mt. Hood climb, I wanted to do something fun, so I set up a kayaking trip.  But there was so much rain that the water levels of the river were too high.  In fact, three people died that week by drowning in rivers and waterways in Oregon and Southwest Washington.  One of the deaths was right in my neighborhood.

I got to go for a couple of hikes in the Columbia Gorge, at least, but the weather basically laughed at me and thwarted my plans for the rest of my trip.  Here are some pictures of typical views on my Gorge hikes:

(from orinjus's flickr photostream)

(from frankenstoen's flickr photostream)

(from dalylab's flickr photostream)

I did get to try out clamming, though!  Actually, someone even managed to die while clamming during my stay -- another attempt to thwart all my plans, I'm sure -- but at least I got this small victory.  Below, I detail my experience clamming.

Clamming

I spent Memorial Day weekend (Saturday-Tuesday) at an oceanfront house at Seaside, OR.  (The town, Seaside, isn't great.  One part of the town is full of fast food and cheap car dealerships and stuff.  The other part of town has a surreal and creepy vibe, looking like a carnival that hasn't evolved since the 70's.  Perfect setting for a Stephen King novel, one where people keep disappearing...)

On Sunday morning, we noticed that hundreds of people were down on the beach, going clamming.  Dad and I decided to take a walk along the beach and try our hand at clamming.  We learned that you can find clams under clam holes that look like this:

(from atonal's flickr photostream)

However, Dad and I didn't find any clam holes that day.  The beach had been all clammed out, so we decided to come back the next day.  After all, Mom had promised that if we caught a clam, she'd eat it.

Note: I'm now going to start indicating emotions in underlined bold for your convenience so you may track my emotional state throughout this adventure!

The next day, Dad, Cole, Albyn, and I went out on the beach a bit earlier with the goal of catching a clam.  We were determined to get one.  Most people had special clamming equipment -- shovels, mesh bags for clam storage, and big clam-digging tubes:

(from laurelfan's flickr photostream)

But we just had our hands.  Yep, it was us vs. nature out there -- human vs. clam.  My brother Cole and I found a few clam holes, and then started digging frantically with our hands.  On the fourth hole, Cole started digging a deep hole.  Cole said he felt something down there!  We were excited!  He was getting tired, so I tagged in and kept digging.  Sure enough, there was something down there, and eventually we got one!  It was a razor clam, which looked sort of like this:

(from meaduva's flickr photostream)

We cracked the shell a bit during our digging, though.  Apparently this is sometimes a problem when clam-digging with your hands; you can crack the shell and then cut up your hands.  However, we emerged from the battle of man versus nature unscathed.

We marched back to the house, feeling triumphant!  We proudly displayed our conquest to the rest of our beach party friends!

Unfortunately, looking at the clam caused some sadness.  Its neck was hanging limply out of the shell.  I don't like killing things.  However, the shell was cracked, so we had to cook it up or waste its sandy little life.  At some point, Cole asked about the expression "happy as a clam..." these clams were not happy. :(

So, uh.  Next up: cutting up the clam into little steaks.

At this point, perhaps I should take a moment to discuss my motivation in this clamming adventure.  I sort of wanted to see if I could catch something with my bare hands and turn it into a food.  If I were the last person alive, could I live on clams?  You know, it's something you wonder about.  It was therefore important to me to be involved in the entire clam-to-stomach process.  With that said, let's progress onto the next emotion...

...horror.  Well, for lack of a better word.  Dismay and shock might have also be mixed in there.  I had a website open about how to cut up a razor clam, which walked me through detaching the clam from the shell and chopping it into "steaks."  The problem was that the clam was very clearly still alive during this process, pushing its foot back and forth in an effort to get away.  Once the clam was completely detached from the shell, I think it stopped moving for good.

(I did some googling later, and it turns out that there is evidence that suggests that invertebrates don't feel pain.  Non-scientists will probably feel uneasy about this claim, but it makes me feel a bit better about the whole thing.  Onwards!)

Following the instructions on the website, I cut the clams into a bunch of little steaks.  Pretty much everything that wasn't guts became a steak.  Mmm, steak:

Next up: make people eat the steaks.  Since Mom promised she would eat the clam, and she can't eat wheat, I ground up a rice patty while we heated up a pan with oil in it.  I then breaded the steaks with the ground rice patty, and fried them for about a minute and a half.  They actually started smelling like food!  A feeling of cautious relief started to emerge, because there was a good chance that the clam's life would at least be sacrificed for tasty food, not for icky food.

Clam steaks!

A feeling of complete relief filled me when Heidi tried a piece of clam and said it was delicious!  Indeed, it was very fresh -- just an hour earlier, it had been hiding in the sand.  Everyone else who tried some also assured me that it was a tasty food.

Now, since I felt compelled to partake in the entire hunting-to-eating experience, I tried a piece.  I'm not generally a seafood fan, especially when it comes to seafood that I've cut up while it writhed in my hands.  As I chewed, I could tell that the food was definitely something that others would find delicious.  I just kept thinking of the whole process and struggled to get it down.  It was me vs. nature, stomach vs. clam.  I emerged the victor.  I had caught, killed, cooked, and eaten a clam.

The next hour or so was filled with surreal confusion at what had just occurred.  I guess it was my first time killing something in the role as a hunter.

Conclusion: when 2012 comes around, meet me at the Oregon coast and I'll provide for all.  Me human, me kill meat!