Salmon in the trees
by Amy Gulick, Fellow, International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP)
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| Amy Gulick, Author & Photographer Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass RainforestPhotograph © Amy Gulick |
Crouched on a rock near a churning waterfall, I’m entranced by thousands of salmon thronging in a pool. Fin to fin, tail to tail, they sway against the current as one giant mob. I forget that they are individual fish until one springs from the crowded stream, hurling itself against the foaming wall of water. Fish after fish, leap after leap, so much energy expended, so much energy delivered. The long green arms of Sitka spruce and hemlock trees spread across the stream as if to welcome the salmon back into their forested fold. Click, click, click goes my camera in a frenzied attempt to freeze an airborne fish in my frame. They’re fast, much faster than my reflexes. I try again and again. Hours vaporize like the mist rising into the forest from the spray of the waterfall. But for the salmon every minute is precious because their time is coming to an end.
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| Salmon Spawning-c |
They’ve stopped eating. They’re in their final act – spawning – and they won’t stop pushing upstream until they die. Their instinctive drive to pass on their genes is hammered home to me with every leaping fish. The harpy screams of ravens emanating from the forest jolt my soul. Bald eagles swoop from treetops to rock tops, eyeballing the feast before them. Bears march into the stream with purpose, causing me to stand at attention. They know I’m here, but they seem focused on the fish at hand or at paw.
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| Bald Eagle and Salmon Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Alaska U.S.A.Photograph © Amy Gulick |
With one eye pressed against the viewfinder and one eye open for bears, I attempt to focus on anything but instead just bask in the present. I’ve never felt more alive. I have a front row seat to one of the greatest shows on Earth, one that plays out every year all over the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska.
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| Spawned Salmon-Chu |
The show will be over, but the annual payout is rich. Bald eagles, fueled by salmon, will soar greater distances to find food during the lean winter months. Female bears, padded with fat reserves, will give birth in their dens and nurse their tiny cubs with salmon-enriched milk. The forest, fertilized with super-charged soil from decayed fish, will sprout new growth come spring.
And the salmon? Those who survived their time in the ocean, dodged the hooks, nets, beaks and jaws of predators, and returned to their birth streams to spawn and die are still here. These salmon live on in frolicking spring cubs, plump blueberries, new growth rings in tree trunks and downy eaglets perched in their nests. And the next generation of salmon is swaddled in the streams and incubated by the forest. The fertilized eggs will soon hatch, ensuring that the cycle of life is a circle, always flowing, never broken. What goes around comes around.
The Tongass Circle of Life
The Tongass National Forest boasts nearly one-third of all that remains of the planet’s rare old-growth temperate rain forests, making it a world as well as national treasure. Rarer still is that all of the pieces are here – ancient forests, wild salmon, grizzly bears, wolves, Steller sea lions, humpback whales and more.
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| Berg Bay Tongass National Forest Alaska U.S.A.Photograph © Amy Gulick |
The circle is whole. And we are part of it too, not strangers on the outside looking in. The Tongass is a place where people live with salmon in their streets and bears in their backyards. One of the world’s largest densities of brown bears is twenty minutes by floatplane from the Internet cafes and 30,000 residents of Juneau, the state capital of Alaska. Cruise ships carrying more than 2,000 passengers ply the same waters as mom-and-pop fishermen.
That the modern world has arrived and hasn’t yet broken the circle of life in the 21st century Tongass is nothing short of astounding. But we’re on our way to carving up this extraordinary forest, and it may just be a matter of time. We only have to look south to the once-magnificent salmon rain forests of Washington, Oregon and northern California to see how quickly we can decimate ancient trees, wild salmon and a rich way of life.
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| Devil's Thumb Frederick Sound Alaska U.S.A.Photograph © Amy Gulick |
Salmon link the land to the sea and they can’t survive if both aren’t healthy. Neither can we. That scientists have discovered salmon in the trees in the Tongass rain forest tells us that everything is connected. And if we start tossing away the pieces, we eventually unravel the whole glorious show. Long ago, we knew how to live within nature’s constraints. Deep down, I think we still do. We need the Tongass if for no other reason than to connect us to the world as we once knew ourselves. When the circle is whole, so are we.
We’ve been given a great gift and an even greater responsibility. The Tongass National Forest is public land entrusted to all of us. I think we can get it right in the Tongass simply because there’s still time to do so, and we know it’s the right thing to do. Let us learn from the lessons that salmon in the trees teach us and ensure that the greatest show on Earth goes on.
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| Muskeg and Forest Tongass National Forest Alaska U.S.A.Photograph © Amy Gulick |
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| Originally published in livebetter eMagazine. Republished with full permissions. |
