Author Archives: kknutzen

The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Me: Could you tell me about the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival? Was it always a festival or was it originally just… tulips! (Fakes jazz hands)

Informant:  When I was in high school, there was no festival. In fact, the tulips themselves were considered waste, because it was from the Washington Bulb Company. They grew the tulips to get the bulbs. They didn’t want the flowers. In fact, they wanted you to come and take the flowers. So, for… student elections, which normally happened around when all the flowers were blooming, we’d go out with garbage bags, and take all of the blooms off the tops of the flowers. Snip off just the buds, put them in garbage bags, and you’d have a whole truck full of garbage bags of just blossoms, no stems, and take it back to school and you could write your name in blossoms, giant piles of blossoms, on the front lawn. So you’d come into school and your name would be spelled out in flowers. Every year. Call them up, and say, “Where should I go to get my blooms?” And they’d tell you which field was in bloom, and you’d go and fill up your truck full of – literally, full of just blossoms.

Me: When did it become an actual festival?

Informant: After I left high school. I was in college. I wasn’t really around. The Chamber of Commerce just decided. Trying to make people come. 

Me: Is there anything associated with the festival or is it just a festival in name?

Informant: No, there are activities that go on the entire month. Probably the best one is the salmon barbeque. The local Kiwanis club hosts a salmon barbeque every weekend – maybe even every night – during the tulip festival. The salmon is actually caught by the members of the Kiwanis club. So that’s good. You just go and have a nice dinner. They get hundreds of salmon, probably go through dozens a night, and they build a giant barbeque out of wood. There are guys who are just in charge of getting the firewood to fire the giant pits where they barbeque the salmon. You eat salmon, coleslaw, corn, and baked potatoes. Potatoes from the farms nearby, corn… ehhhhh… depends on the year. 

Background:
My informant is my father. He is in his mid-fifties, and grew up in a rural farm town in Washington State called Burlington, which is the home of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, the festival described in the above piece. I grew up going to see the tulips every year with my parents and my whole extended family, so the festival is quite important to me as well.

Thoughts:
I’ve attended the tulip festival almost every year for as long as I can remember, even if it was just to drive by and see the huge fields of tulips. It’s one of my favorite things about being from Washington state, getting to go to this tulip festival. The salmon barbeques are a huge community gathering, and it’s a chance to see your entire extended family, all of their friends, all of their friends’ extended family, and so on and so forth. Even if you don’t live there, you feel like a member of the community. The festival itself is very important to me, and I had to miss it this year due to the pandemic, which is devastating. 

Salish Tribe – Thunderbird and Spirit of the Water

Informant: We also have to talk about the myths of the Salish people, particularly the Thunderbird and the Spirit of the Water. I don’t know them that well, I just know that the Thunderbird is the bird that makes the thunder in the sky with the clap of his wings, and the Spirit of the Water is the Orca. He’s like… a brother. Someone who protects you and watches over you. 

Me: Where did you first hear about them? 

Informant: I grew up with them. The Swinimish tribe was just down the road in La Conner. We’d play them in sports all the time, the kids in the tribal school, so we were always over there. I think they were called The Braves. They hosted a basketball tournament every year, and it was a big deal, to go to the Swinimish Basketball Tournament. But you would always be – you’d always learn about their history. That was just the way it was. And it was really considered a good thing. You’d go to their school, and they’d have a giant Orca in their gymnasium. It was everywhere! That was just kinda what it was. And the totem poles, and you’d learn the history of the totem poles, how to read them and what they were and what they represented and things like that. 

Background: 
My informant is my father. He is in his mid-fifties, and grew up in a rural farm town in Washington State near some Native American tribes. As he described in the piece, he played sports with kids from their tribal school, so he was exposed first hand to Native American history as opposed to learning about it in school. The myths of the Salish people are pretty well known in the general Seattle area, and many have been turned into children’s books you might find in school libraries or bookstores. (While that’s not how my father learned the stories, I think it’s important to bring it up for context of the area he grew up in)

Thoughts: 

While the stories of the Thunderbird and other characters in these myths are widely known across Washington, I personally didn’t know that the Orca was the Spirit of the Water. It made a lot of sense, and made me rethink if that’s why Washington is so protective of their Orcas. I always thought it was because they aren’t very common, and that made having them nearby a source of pride; however, now I’m wondering how much of Washington’s attachment to the animal has to do with the myths that say the Orcas will watch over us and protect us. It’s a perspective I’d never thought about before, and I found it to be really interesting.

Sasquatch

Informant: Sasquatch! Ahhhhh, a good Northwest legend. Or maybe… Real? (Fakes a dramatic gasp, then laughs) You might not know this, but of the most recent in Bigfoot, which kinda really started in the 70s, a lot of the earlier sightings were up by Mount Baker. Particularly on the south fork of the Nooksack, which is a place where I used to go to all the time when I was in high school. It’s veeeeeery remote, and if you don’t know how to get there, you’d never – you’d have a thousand acres to yourself, and there’d be no one else around, and it got creepy at times. You know that feeling, how you feel like somebody’s watching you? Yeahhhh, I felt that a couple times out there.

Me: Were you ever specifically looking for Bigfoot, or did you just want to be alone?

Informant: Nah, I was just hanging out. Just something to do. But you’d be sitting there by the river and all of a sudden you’d be like “… Someone’s watching me.” And then you would leave. Yeah, it was creepy. And there was one time, after graduation, me and a bunch of friends went up camping, up in that general area, and we all got freaked out in the middle of the night, ‘cuz we all kinda woke up, and we actually got in the car and left in the middle of the night, ‘cuz we were too freaked out – you just have these feelings. So, never saw any footprints, but definitely felt a presence.

Me: Like… a ghost?

Informant: No. Bigfoot.

Me: It had to be Bigfoot?

Informant: Of course. It was definitely Bigfoot.

Background:
My informant is my father. He is in his mid-fifties, and grew up in a rural farm town in Washington State, where Bigfoot is a widely accepted legend. We have Bigfoot merchandise sold in almost every store, and are very proud that he’s from our area. I’ve never known the informant to be the type to believe things without evidence, but Bigfoot is the one he’s always accepted, despite never having any experiences seeing footprints or coming face to face with him or anything like that.

Thoughts:
I personally don’t know if I believe Bigfoot’s real, but I like him as a character. I’m proud that he’s from the Pacific Northwest, because I’m very proud of being from the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never had any interactions with him, or known anyone who’s had interactions with him. I have no reason to believe he’s real, but I also have no reason to believe he’s not real.