September and no fish

September and no fish.... 

When I was younger, we lived about 1/10 of a mile from this very spot. Around the middle of September, the Indians and the commercial fishermen were allowed to fish for salmon for about a week. This was before the very controversial BOLDT decision which I will not go into here right now. Fishing boats were deck to deck out on this vast area of water. (If you look really hard you can see the very end of Vancouver Island in Canada, and the San Juan Islands in Washington.) there were so many that you wondered how they could avoid hitting each other.

September weather is usually very clear and cool. At night I would walk down to the beach and just sit on a log and listen to the radios in each boat squak back at each other. I would go home and listen out my window at the fishermen all night long. It was very unique to sit there and know that the fish they were catching were coming back from their 5 year run out to sea, and that they were coming back into the fresh water streams to spawn and start the cycle all over again.

Back then we knew that the oceans were so vast, and the fish so plentiful that they would never be depleated.

A mere 40 years later, at that very spot, and the same time of the year, I sat in the car and looked out where there were once deck to deck fishing boats. There were two boats in the water, chugging on through the strait and into Canada. But no Fishing boats. You see, we did not pay attention, and we overfished the salmon, and even worse, we clear cut the trees that forested the mountains where the cold, clear gravely streams trickled from. The Salmon knew by natures own way, that they were supposed to spawn in those streams. They need the cold clear gravel to lay their eggs and then die.

Now because of the extensive logging, the hills have eroded into the cold clear streams and turned them into muddy silty sandy creeks, that the salmon can not survive in. As you fly over the Olympic Penninsula and Vancouver Island on your way to Alaska, you can look down and see far out into the strait of Juan de Fuca, the muddy fan of silt coming from the mouth of the rivers.

THe fishing boats are gone now, the nights are silent. The fishermen no longer there to talk through the night to their friends who were also catching fish. THe whistles on the boats are silent, the trawlers are silent, the Men are all gone, The fish are all GOne, and the Trees are all gone. All that is left is clear cut forest land where there are no more trees, and no more jobs for the loggers. The streams and rivers are all silted up and dirty.

THe land will come back, it will take a good 50-75 years, providing that the people who come after us take care of what is left of our natural resources. THe trees will grow back, and when they do, the rains will once again drop their moisture onto the evergreens and slowly drip down into the moss and the undergrowth. THe streams will come back slowly, once the land is covered again, and the rains dont run madly down dirty bare slopes. The fish will come back, because there is a few men and women who are hand raising the smolt and releasing them into the wild. It will take a few decades, but with concerned and informed citizens watching over it all, it will survive.

Once the Fish are back, then the boats and the men who ran them may come back, but never in the way that they once did. We should be smarter then, and know that it depends on us all. We are all part of a giant circle of life, and we are all important. Who knew that cutting down a tree would make a fishing boat disappear? Let us not forget.