The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

“Morgan’s Musings,” originally known as “Coulee Country Outdoor Report,” first came to being on July 9, 1987. The final Musings will be with this issue, capping some 24 years, seven months of fiction and fact from the outdoor scene.

After spending many an hour combining outdoor verbiage, it has made as much sense in its completion as those before it. Even though every published word you read was proof-read by my lovely wife Linda.

Katherine Rosman, a syndicated journalist for the Sunday Edition of the Wall Street Journal, wrote in this week’s issue — her last, by the way — a column which has appeared in “seven million Sunday issues.” If The Star published anywhere near this number of issues a week, with appropriate remuneration, of course, I probably would have been able to squeeze out a few more columns.

This has been a good ride. When I approached former editor and publisher Jim Black in 1987 and asked him if The Star would be interested in local weekly hunting and fishing information, he told me he was “game.” On July 9, 1987, the “Coulee Country Outdoor Report” hit the stands preceded earlier by a five-minute time slot a few days a week for radio station KEYG.

One of the highlights of my years in The Star were the yearly trips from the Coulee to the Canadian Princess salmon fishing resort on the west coast of Vancouver Island prior to Memorial Day. On most occasions, this included one charter boat (14 rods), but on one occasion, two boats were filled.

We would leave Four Corners at O-dark-30 and, arriving at Ucluelet about 3 p.m. We would fish hard for three days and catch salmon and halibut. After fishing hard the last morning, we would fly back to Vancouver, B. C.

The last day was long, but we were much younger then. We would drive straight home from Vancouver, arriving as the coulee was welcoming the new day. In later years fishermen brought their wives, who called for a mandatory overnight stay in a motel near I-5, before heading east the next morning. Why hadn’t we thought of this before?

As the Coulee Crew became older or passed on (Bill Thurston, Ted Jenn RIP), or found eating difficult on the bounding main, no one has stepped forward to continue the Coulee Cruises to Canada.

The writing of these weekly columns has become time consuming. Today, for them to make any sense, we’re talking hours.

Your thoughts and comments over the past quarter-century are what has kept Musings alive. I would like to thank Gwen Hilson, who has typed all the columns for all these years, wife Linda for reviewing numerous drafts and Editor Scott for his constructive criticism.