Mother's Friend and Teacher Sy Garrett

Mother had a lifelong love of the natural world.  Growing up on Puget Sound where fish, clams and oysters were abundant left her with the love of fishing, digging and hunting for food.  A family friend named Sy Garrett who lived on the Olympic Peninsula also imprinted her with a knowledge of nature.  He taught her, and her siblings the names and use of the trees, flowers, mushrooms and wildlife surrounding them in the paradise they loved.  They spent hours, days and weeks with Sy tramping through the woods and along the shoreline.  Sy was a half-breed Indian as people of mixed races were labeled in those days.  A book called the "The Egg & I" by Betty MacDonald, had a character modeled after him, which upset mother as it made him look like a local yokel.  He was a game warden as well as a self-taught biologist, naturalist and teacher who would be the envy of a doctor of biology today.  Growing up in the Native American society had taught him how to live off the land and this rubbed off on mother.  She loved to fish which did not rub off on me because she always got us up at an ungodly hour to get to the trail head to hike three miles to the perfect stream.  I have come to appreciate the fact that one needs to fish at the proper time of day if we want fish for dinner, but at that time it seemed totally unnecessary.  I am sure her days spent with Sy were a wonderful escape from her mother. However, her German mother was also very frugal and I am sure loved the fact that her children would come home from Sy's with a bounty of fresh food for her to prepare. This also impacted my mother as she loved to make a meal out of freshly picked mushrooms, beef from the ranch and garden produce or any combination of locally acquired edibles.