The narrow band between high and low tide is Puget Sound’s most protean ecosystem, where the rhythms of existence constantly fluctuate with the twice daily expansion and contraction of our inland sea. For thousands of years, those pulses of water dictated life for the Sound’s human inhabitants. Where one lived, how one traveled, and when one could find food: all depended on knowing the tides and how they affected the movement and location of water, plants, and animals.

Hoping to remedy my disconnect, at least in a minimal way, I decided to watch a tidal exchange at Seattle’s Discovery Park. On August 10, 2017, I reached the beach at 6:30 A.M., when the water had been ebbing out for three hours. I established my base for the day, a driftwood tree trunk perfect for leaning against. A dozen feet away, beyond a sloped cobble and sand beach, quiet, barely breaking waves approached the shore so gradually they seemed reluctant to arrive. Beyond, no feature broke the smooth water surface.

The dominance of a liquid world would soon change as the water continued to backtrack from the sloped beach out onto a flat, low-tide terrace. By 7:00 A.M., the top of a lone boulder poked above the water surface about 65 yards offshore. Closer in, three ends of a stump had breached, and within another hour, the water had retreated enough to expose more than a dozen boulders the size of a doghouse or larger, as well as seaweed strewn fingers of cobbles and expanses of rippled sand. Further out in the water, a steady stream of kelp moved north, carried by the ebbing current.

Moon snail egg casing, shore crab, anemone in a tidepool, bull kelp, and eelgrass on the beach. You can click on image to make it full screen.

At the tide’s low point, at 10:34 A.M., more than a third of a mile of beach spread out into Puget Sound. I observed only minimal change over the next hour, during what is known as the tide’s slack time. Slowly the water began to advance faster, peaking between 1:30 and 2:00 P.M. During this period, I walked out to the waterline, stopped, and watched as the water swelled toward shore. Twenty minutes later, the water had risen three fourths up my calves and advanced more than 100 feet. After another thirty minutes or so, the tide had returned almost to where it had been when I arrived eight hours earlier.

Watching that surge was humbling and exciting, fully revealing the tidal pulses that most Puget Sound residents, me included, fail to notice every day. Every twelve hours the Sound inhales and exhales, covering and uncovering a beautiful, evanescent world that thrives at the intersection of land and water.

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