69 Just about Having Fun at Rosario Beach

The lot of all Biology Majors at Walla Walla College was to spend at least one summer at the Walla Walla Biology Sta. at Rosario Beach, on Fidalgo Island in the San Juan Islands. It was a great place to spend the summer and would have been the perfect place to holiday except for the classes, which sort of messed up the whole experience.

Don’t get me wrong I still enjoyed the experience, (a little) but I must be honest, it was not as relaxing as a week at the local beach, especially with a wife and two kids and what with trying to get the last of my studies out of the way so I could graduate in August.

The two classes, which I was taking, were enjoyable because one was on flowering plants and the other on the study of invertebrates.

The flowering plant course meant that we had to go on a couple of field trips, one up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains and the other to Cascade Pass up the Skagit River near Ross Lake. I found pressing and identifying various plants was a lot of fun and quite interesting.

Invertebrates on the other hand are a unique group of animals that inhabit the seas and most if not all fresh water. As part of the course we were out in the station’s boat dragging for them one sunny summer day in the San Juan Islands. This particular day we had just pulled the drag up to take a look when suddenly Prof. Watson grabbed the drag and without warning flipped it over, giving me a smack in the mouth. In doing so he broke off the corner of my left front tooth.

The experience was of minor importance to the professor who I thought was a bit uncaring at the time and seemed quite indifferent to the discomfort and inconvenience he caused, not to mention the pain he caused in getting it fixed. It is experiences like these that hopefully mellow us and give us the grace to forgive and forget, and I hope I have.

Even though college had been a struggle I looked back on my experience with satisfaction, especially Rosario Beach as it was the final event before graduation and the beginning of a new chapter in my life. Soon I would be working for the Federal Forest Service, at the Pacific Forestry Center in Victoria, BC.