THROUGH THE MUSCADINE continued THROUGH THE MUSCADINE continued
Katherine Smith, a local from Pinebluff, is
an Alaskan greenhorn and accidental poet.
She’s currently working in Chugach National
Forest, living to make life that is art.
Salmon
by Katherine Smith
Wild July roses and magenta fireweed cones
sink the summer. Alaska Natives say every
fireweed is the soul of a tree lost in wildfire, as
it’s the first to grow from the ashes. I am fresh
home from two and a half weeks of firefighting
in Montana, and my lungs are ragged. But it’s the
last day of salmon dipnetting season, so I rachet
my net to the Subaru and drive four hours south
to the mouth of Kenai River.
My friend Erin and I drag our coolers, nets
and filet knives down to the beach. It is lined
with people and speckled with tents of those
who camp until they catch their limit. I clip my
rubber rain jacket over the men’s extra large
chest waiters and slide into the stormy water.
The current yanks my net, disorienting the 10
foot pole, and I brace the cold metal handle
against my body. Suddenly, within the jerks of
current is a different kind of pull. It’s subtle, but I
trust it, swivel the handle up, lift the net’s mouth
to skim the surface and do a slow-motion run
against the tide toward the shore. Oncorhynchus
nerka, the red, hooked-nose salmon known as
Sockeye, is tangled in my net. “Thank you,” I
whisper, through tears. I don’t avert my eyes as
I hit his head several times with a rock. He stills.
He is the first life I’ve ever taken, and as I knew
immediately, the first one I’ve deserved.
Hunter moon consumes the October
morning. I am crouch-lunging beside Willawaw
Creek, hunting chanterelle and hedgehog
mushrooms thrusting through the dense moss.
Over the rushing water, I hear a giant splash. I
crane for a bear or moose trotting to my bankside,
but see nothing. Soon, I hear it again, and
push through the willows and alders to the
creek, scanning the water bubbling over stones.
Upstream thrusts the belly of a salmon, jumping
against the gentle current. Every minute or
so, another attempt, and I watch in hallowed
respect as she swims in place, then slowly
backward, soon to be exhausted on the bank
with many others. Their death’s smell fills the
forest without as within, as the individual tree
rings’ nitrogen levels correlate exactly to the size
of the respective year’s salmon run.
Light leaks from the December sky like the
last grains of sand in an hourglass. This is the
month of staples. We cook salmon stock, salmon
cornmeal-battered, fried with buttermilk
biscuits, smoked into jerky, and canned with a
jalapeño slice in the bottom of a jar. Midwinter
salmon sustains and sows the summer.
As one of up to 5,000 sibling eggs fertilized
in gravel nests, a salmon’s life begins. Embryos
develop over winter in the cold well-oxygenated
fresh water. In spring, they hatch with the yolk
sack of the egg attached to their bellies. Several
months pass as the alevins eat their yolk sacks,
and begin to feed as young fry. Depending on
the species, salmon may spend up to a year
in their natal waters, if they have access to
protection in the rock-lined, shaded, channeled
streams of the wild. When they are ready, the
fry allow themselves to be carried backward,
downstream, into the ocean. There, depending
on the species, they may stay up to eight years.
Then comes the part no scientist can fully
explain; the epiphany of species. They return.
En masse, salmon travel several hundred miles
and vertical feet, up the ladders of dozens of
massive dams, around fishing trollers, and
through bears, eagles, and the eager dip-netter
until they reach their exact natal waters. Salmon
THROUGH THE MUSCADINE con't. next column THROUGH THE MUSCADINE con't. next column
who survive absorb their own scales, turning the
color of their red flesh. The males develop hook
noses and fight other males for courting rights
with females. When ready to spawn, the female
will rake a depression in the gravel bed with her
body, and simultaneously release her eggs with
the male’s milt. They will spawn until they die.
The life cycle of salmon is as reliable as the
cycle of the seasons. Or at least, it was. Overharvesting,
habitat loss, dams and warming
spawning grounds squeeze salmon returns to
a fraction of a percent of historical averages in
some places. Humans’ attempt to mitigate the
decline in form of hatcheries costs billions of
dollars per year, facilitates a smaller percentage
of successful return than wild salmon, and a
rapidly decreases biodiversity and adaptability.
Here in Alaska, we are patroned by salmon.
Salmon are an irreplaceable food source and
family member of Alaska Natives, and their
return connects and sustains we newer locals.
Protection of our salmon is a moral obligation, a
byproduct of love. The salmon in my net followed
his life’s purpose. I held him, inspired and
humbled by his determination, as a willinglygiven
gift. As I protest the proposed Pebble mine
and restore habitat of spawning streams and tell
his story, it is to give a gift back.
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No. 129 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.33
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