Geographically, Port Townsend and vicinity lie in dragon territory. Most of us who have had this pointed out to us have a hard time not seeing it every time we look at a map of the area. Check it out ...
Port Townsend lies within the head of the dragon, Marrowstone and Indian Islands form the forelegs, Hood Canal bridge takes off from the hind legs, Toandos Peninsula is the tail and the wings are defined by the mountain ridges that delineate our watershed (the broken red line on the map).
In fact, the dragon shape is the land portion of the Quilcene-Snow watershed (aka WRIA 17), the area covered by our watershed management plan. If political divisions followed natural features, the dragon would be our county.
Chimacum, historically home to the Chimakum tribe, is said to be the heart of the dragon.
Interestingly, there is an old Chimakum tribal legend about a dragon – not a usual character in Native American mythology. It reportedly goes something like this:
Long before the coming of Europeans, a dragon lived on an island in Chimacum Valley's Anderson Lake.
When the weather was fine, the dragon would swim ashore to sun himself on Tamanawos Rock. The Chimacum people feared the dragon whose eyes shone with an eerie blue light. They named it Noquiklos, their word for devil.
The warrior Quarlo decided to confront Noquiklos, and paddled to meet the dragon with arrows and a flint knife. The weapons glanced off the dragon's scales, and Noquiklos hissed and fixed Quarlo with a hypnotic stare.
But instead of devouring the warrior, Noquiklos licked his face with a long, red tongue and nestled close by his side. When Quarlo left the island, Noquiklos swam behind and went to live with him on the shore of Scow Bay.
In later years when enemies came to attack Quarlo, Noquiklos destroyed them with streams of fire shot from his eyes. The dragon often swam out into Puget Sound and returned with seal, salmon and other food and riches.
Quarlo prospered and when he died at the age of 200, a broken-hearted Noquiklos plunged into the sea and did not return.
[lifted from a Nov ’93 Kitsap Sun article by Carolyn Latteier]
A version of this story can be found on the dragon kiosk in H. J. Carrol Park in Chimacum, next to the native plant demonstration project and down the path from the labyrinth. The kiosk as well as the delightful dragon sculpture next to it (Mall Johani, artist) came into existence for the 1993 Wild Olympic Salmon Festival. A game of “find the dragon tracks” was used to educate participants about our local water shed and hydrologic cycle. The game is described in the Geocaching Series Track the Dragon.
The Kitsap Sun article quotes festival coordinator David Gordon as saying that the dragon myth symbolizes humans’ relationship to nature. "The deeper story is about befriending nature, about learning to live with what could be fearful," Gordon said.
