If you’re a reader, you might have encountered Vikki in a bookstore’s language or philosophy section; if a gardener, it might have been at a nursery as you were musing over vegetable plants and wondering which to pick – she’d have explained differences in yield, size and the best variety for the locale; if your first encounter were at a building supply, it would not have been unusual, as Vikki worked wonders renovating and restoring old homes.

And, if you developed a relationship with Vikki, you indeed would have joined her and guests at an expansive table burdened with culinary delights you’d never heard of or likely sampled. She travelled widely – her first trip, after her first year at university, was aboard a steamship across the Atlantic to explore the continent for most of a year. You and she might have even spent a day walking the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, in the North West of Spain. At the University of Washington, Vikki studied International Studies and then at the Univesity of Texas, Austin, for graduate studies in the same field, specializing in Latin American Studies. After Monticello, New Mexico, Astoria, Oregon, Sequim, Washington; Vikki settled in Oaxaca, Mexico for her last years. She, surrounded by friends and family, passed June 11, 2021. Vikki Darland was born in Nebraska City, Nebraska, on November 13, 1943, and, on the anniversary of that day, 78 years later, Vikki’s ashes are to be remitted to the Salish Sea, where she battled many a salmon and gathered her fair share of clams and oysters. For those wishing to give, please give thanks.