"For the past twenty years Ron Strickland, oral historian and hiker extraordinaire, has been travelling the dramatic seacoasts, snow-capped Cascades, and lush Olympic Rain Forest of Washington State. Canvassing the length and breadth of the land, he has assembled the most captivating stories in a broad and exciting collection of Washington folklife that captures the independent and idiosyncratic spirit of the people from tough oldtimers to contemporary New Agers. Cowboys and wheat farmers, fishermen and loggers, Indians and city folk, saloonkeepers and Prohibition agents, oystermen and hippies, and, naturally, whistlepunks and geoduck hunters, all rub elbows on the streets and trails of the Washington discovered and revealed by Ron Strickland." --Book jacket