What happens when you join other writers and communicators at the Bayshore Preserve to experience the peak of the chum salmon run is that you find yourself, strangely, at a loss for words.

At least this is what happened to me while standing on the banks of Johns Creek staring down into the shallow water watching fish after fish after fish swim upstream to spawn. 

Being at a loss for words as such a time has its benefits. If you’re not chatting or asking questions, you can close your eyes and listen for the chum, which are sometimes hard to see unless their dorsal fins rise above the surface like a shark’s in the ocean. With your eyes closed, you can hear the difference in the sound of the splash of the creek flowing downstream and the thrash of the salmon heading upstream. The sound of a wild fish—its tail driving its whole body against the current—is distinctive. When you hear it, you open your eyes and look for the fish slicing through the water in an energetic burst that lasts mere seconds.

Being at a loss for words means you can stand, awestruck and amazed, taking in the sheer improbability and significant risk of such a long and difficult migration from the open water of the Pacific Ocean, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and through the labyrinth of inlets and passages to reach Johns Creek. 

It’s thanks to the Capitol Land Trust that the public can reach Johns Creek, too. The Capitol Land Trust (CLT) purchased the 74-acre property on the western shore of Oakland Bay just three miles northwest of Shelton in 2014. Most of the property was a golf course back then, but slowly the fairways and putting greens are returning to native habitat through painstaking restoration efforts that also includes creating new tidal channels.

The annual chum salmon run drew many visitors to the edges of Johns Creek this fall, but the Bayshore Preserve offers delights and discoveries year round. Now--as we slouch toward the winter solstice and deck our halls with twinkling lights and flickering candles--is the perfect time to walk the preserve’s trails. Now is the perfect time for a quiet ramble to observe the subtler spectacles of nature—the grand profiles of the bare Oregon oaks, evergreen Douglas-firs, and bright-barked madrones; the newly planted oaks; the shorebirds and harbor seals; the eagles, hawks, heron, and gulls. 

The preserve includes 27 acres of salt marsh habitat described by CLT as “pristine.” Indeed, when you follow the trails through the preserve and look out over the Oakland Bay marshlands, you may feel as I did that you are in a real place, an original piece of Puget Sound, a living landscape untouched by anything but water, wildlife, trees, clouds, wind, and tides. 

The Bayshore Preserve is open dawn to dusk year round. For directions and for more information on the preserve, visit https://capitollandtrust.org/conserved-lands/conservation-areas/oakland-bay-goldsborough-creek-watershed/bayshore-preserve/