Banana Point Water Taxi -

Stumps of ancient red cedars, petrified by time and tide, jut from the water like skeletal fingers. Some rise twenty feet, their roots still clutching the mud below. Aris weaves between them with practiced ease. “On a minus tide,” he shouts over the engine, “you can see the old road bed down there. This whole valley was a town before the dam broke in ’89.”

The Yellow Jacket is no tourist novelty. Its flat bottom allows it to slide over submerged logs. Its jet drive (no propeller to get fouled in driftwood) can run in just six inches of water. The hull is scarred with white stripes—each one a kiss from a floating cedar snag. The journey takes exactly 17 minutes, but it feels like traveling through a lost world. Leaving Mora, Aris guns the engine past the James Island Lighthouse. Then he cuts hard to port, into a narrow channel called Devil’s Elbow . Here, the Quillayute widens into a brackish estuary known locally as the Drowned Forest. banana point water taxi

He refers to the —a real event (though the name is fictionalized here for the story’s purpose). In 1989, an abandoned logging dam gave way during a record rainstorm, flooding the lowlands and creating the permanent, stump-littered lake that now separates Banana Point from the rest of the world. A Typical Run On a foggy Tuesday, Aris carries three passengers: a marine biologist heading to count otters, a hiker with a broken ankle who needs evacuation, and a 70-year-old resident named June returning from town with fifty pounds of chicken feed and a blood-pressure prescription. Stumps of ancient red cedars, petrified by time

“Banana Point bound? Hop in. Mind the otter.” “On a minus tide,” he shouts over the

The water taxi has no schedule. It runs on demand, by VHF radio. Residents signal by hoisting a yellow flag on their dock. Aris charges $25 per person or a dozen fresh Dungeness crabs. In winter, when the river runs high and gray, he often makes the trip for free, because “you don’t let neighbors drown in their own kitchen.” The Yellow Jacket serves as ambulance, mail boat, grocery delivery, and social worker. Last winter, Aris delivered a breech-calf goat during a gale, using the boat’s flat bow as a makeshift delivery table. He once towed a floating cabin that had broken loose in a storm, nudging it back to Banana Point like a mother whale guiding its calf. The Future Development pressures are rising. A county commissioner recently proposed a bridge—a $40 million concrete arch that would span the Drowned Forest, cutting Aris’s route in half. Residents voted it down 8 to 4. They prefer the water taxi. “A bridge brings rules, permits, and tourists with RVs,” June told the local paper. “The Yellow Jacket brings Aris. We’ll keep the boat.” Riding the Yellow Jacket If you ever find yourself at the Mora Launch Ramp on a clear morning, you might spot a flash of yellow rounding Devil’s Elbow, threading between the skeletal stumps of the Drowned Forest. Wave your arm. Captain Aris will throttle down, tilt his stained ball cap, and ask the only question that matters:

To reach Banana Point, you don’t drive. You can’t. The last road ends six miles back, swallowed decades ago by a landslide that no one bothered to clear. Instead, you rely on the —a battered, bright-yellow 22-foot aluminum landing craft named The Yellow Jacket . The Vessel and Its Captain Captain Aris Thorne, a third-generation river rat with forearms like dock lines and a beard that houses its own ecosystem, runs the service. From his boathouse at the Mora Launch Ramp, he ferries a curious mix of passengers: scientists studying the ancient Sitka spruce, hikers tackling the remote stretch of the Ozette Triangle, and the half-dozen permanent residents of Banana Point—a resilient bunch living off-grid in cabins on stilts.