“It has to do with the brood year of those fish,” says Cathy. “These are three- to five- year old fish, so it’s the brood year of ’99, ’98. I guess those conditions and the ocean conditions have been really good for them. We had concerns because the water was warm and low this year, but it’s been raining pretty good, the water temperatures are pretty normal now, and the fish are just coming up in these intense numbers.” 

            The real message that we get from all the charts and graphs, the numbers and estimates, is that we don’t know enough. Every piece of information we humans manage to learn about salmon trails more questions behind it.

            Many of the questions about their other lives in the oceans, and about their lives here among us in the rivers. After the conversation with Cathy, I walked down to a shallow riffle just above the Forks of Salmon. The battered shapes of three Chinook salmon were there moving slowly against the current. They looked as if they carried the millions of years of salmon history with them; looked so ancient and dignified that they seemed untouchable even as they floated inches away in the clear water.

            There is a danger, I thought, in reducing all this to an equation. And the numbers, while important, are not the vital thing about the fish counts. It seems more important that the community comes out here to the river’s side on a rainy day to watch the salmon pass by. It’s important that the community connects with its salmon again, watching and learning, working toward the year when we have balanced things enough to meet as equals. Then maybe we can come back with songs and dip nets, with a sense of gratitude as we are fed by a river full of salmon like the runs of not too long ago. Until that year we will come with government forms and tags to count and watch, and wait.
                                                                           (4)

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