TRAVELER @ nationalgeographic.com

Sittin’ on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away—Otis Redding, 1968

I learned to fish at the Old Town dock, apprenticed to a brother who had trained four siblings before me. Behind us rose the steep, cobblestone streets of Tacoma; before us the Puyallup River muddied Commencement Bay, dubbed by its downwind neighbors as the armpit of Puget Sound. The nickname alluded to the formerly pungent emissions of Tacoma’s industrialized tide flats, and was, if nothing else, anatomically correct. Tacoma lies near the terminus of Washington’s vast inland waterway, an 80-mile-long arm of the Pacific Ocean that links Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, Everett, and far-north Bellingham, in the wax and wane of its salty tide.

Puget Sound is a watery maze of deep channels and over 300 timbered islands that rise like shoulders hunched against the seemingly perpetual rain of northwestern Washington. When the rain abates, and the clouds part, Puget Sound is truly a scenic paradise. Snowcapped peaks loom above the forested foothills—to the west the rugged Olympic Peninsula, to the east the Cascade Mountains. My father, an easterner by birth, could never seem to grasp the local geography. “There’s the Appalachians,” he would tease, as we hunted for agates among the wave-washed pebbles at Steilacoom Beach. No one, though, could mistake Rainier—known to locals simply as the Mountain. At 14,410 feet, Mt. Rainier is the tallest peak in the Cascades. Native Americans called the mountain Tahoma, and it was consolation at least that our belittled city was named for this massive, snowcapped monolith.

Puget Sound itself honors Peter Puget, a British naval officer who sailed with George Vancouver, and charted the Sound in 1792. The Sound, of course, was first explored by Native Americans who used canoes hewn from the western red cedars that still grace the region’s steep hillsides. Puget Sound today is home to kayaks, fishing boats, sailboats and fleets of green and white ferries. Cargo ships the size of small cities also navigate these waters, eased into deep natural harbors by well-muscled tugs.

In busy harbor and secluded inlet alike, the waters of Puget Sound abound with life. Orcas and harbor seals hunt here, as does the gigantic Pacific octopus that can grow up to 20 feet in the cold waters of the Sound. Rock cod and spiny-finned sculpin nibble at baited line; barnacles and mussels encrust the shore where tiny crabs lurk at low tide; and pilings flaunt sea stars and anemones like gaudy jewels.

Though I have drifted south to the banks of the mighty Columbia River, I return to Puget Sound often, drawn like a salmon to its natal stream. In the shadow of the Mountain, I walk along Old Town dock where the salt air is heavy with the scent of kelp, and crabs scrabble for cover beneath a barnacled rock. The place of a lifetime need not be an exotic port of call. It is that place fingered in memory like a wave-washed pebble, the place that smells like home.