Martha L Henderson

Gray's Harbor: Finding Refuge Among Shorebirds and Saints Martha L Henderson

Gray Quinn watched the tide create ripples in the mudflats that lay gurgling and gasping around the rocks where he sat. He thought of his ancestor, Captain Gray, who would have stood on the bow of the Lady Washington in 1788 watching the same process. Not far from Gray Quinn sat Saron Lindquist, hidden in the tall grasses along the rocky shore that forms a part of the Grays Harbor Unit of the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. Saron watched a heron, motionless at the edge of the mudflat. Suddenly, the heron stretched its long neck and pushed its needle-nose beak into a pool of water. A silver fish flopped about until, in one swift move, the heron flipped the fish into the length of its beak and into its outstretched neck. Gray, Saron and the heron watched the mudflats from their vantage points. Gray, homeless and shattered by drugs, Saron, chased into the grasses by modern-day pirates, and the heron. Seeking shelter, Gray, Saron and the shorebirds hope to survive on the muddy margin between land and sea.