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North Wind on Puget Sound (Framed)

A smooth stretch of water in southeast-facing Port Madison, reflecting the sky, is the signature of the North wind in Puget Sound. In winter a North wind brings clear skies and cold. The Olympic Mountains, forming a peninsula that shelters the Puget Sound basin from the rain-laden winds off the Pacific Ocean, stand out sharply against the clear sky. Much of that rain, over 100 inches a year of it, is dropped on the west side of the protecting mountain range, leaving the Sound with a mild climate that afforded the Native Salish people, who occupied villages scattered along its shores, an environment rich with resources from the land along with the harvest of the inland sea. Winds in the protected sound are generally moderate and travel by canoe connected the distant villages. Here two Suquamish canoes, sailing easily before the North breeze, head homeward toward their village near Agate Pass, in Port Madison.