8/19/2019 From Fish to Forest WA Trails 09-10

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Trail Book »

Salmon in the Treesby Amy Gulick

($29.95, 2010)

0 » News+Views  September + October 2010 » Washington Trails www.wta.o

From Fish to Forestby Stephen Tan

Life, death, renewal. It’s a principlewe’re introduced to at an early ageand one that aspiring earth scientists

learn, with increasing complexity,again and again. Food chains evolveinto energy pyramids, which giveway to nutrient cycles and ecologicalnetworks.

The connections between living things in even the simplest of eco -systems can be stunningly intricate.So when in the late 1990s a researchscientist from the University of Alaskadiscovered high levels of marine-

derived nitrogen in trees standingmiles from the sea and a thousand yards from any stream, she might hav

conjured some fanciful hypothesis to explain why. But the reason provedsimple: salmon feed the forests of southeast Alaska. Plucked by predatorsfrom the tributaries of the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine and Unuk Rivers and

hundreds of other streams, they are carried into the forest and dropped there, often intact but for the skin, roe and brains favored by bears. Thenutrients their flesh releases to the soil reemerge in the foliage of thewestern red cedar, Sitka spruce, and western hemlock that dominate thisbiome. Fish to forest in a single step.

 Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska’s Tongass Rain Forest (BraidedRiver, April 2010) draws its name from this discovery. While it offers im-ages of mountains, glaciers, bears, and eagles and elegant accounts ofnatural history that would be expected from any photologue of the Alaskpanhandle, its richness arises from its willingness to look beyond natu-

ral splendor and from its ambition to paint an accurate portrait of life in this region, particularly human l ife. How tempting it might have been forphotojournalist Amy Gulick (who lives in North Bend, Washington) andher collaborators to ignore the 75,000 people who live and work here, toretreat with camera and journal to the remote forests, ice fields and fjordand the hundreds of uninhabited islands of the Alexander Archipelago. I

so magnificent a place, they could hardly have gone wrong.

That book has, of course, been photographed and written before.Whether in Alaska or anywhere else some sliver of unspoiled terrain stillremains, someone has managed to capture it on film, erase any sign thathumans have been there, and package what’s left with the musings of

philosophers and poets.

Vast, remote, ecologically intact and exceedingly photogenic, theTongass would appear ready-made for this approach. But while this 17million-acre temperate rainforest may dazzle, it bears the scars of misuse

mismanagement, and exploitation. The serial plunder of its resources—furin the 1700s, gold in the late 1800s, fisheries and timber in the 1900s—has given way to new threats. And although we might like to imagineit differently, its human residents don’t always live in harmony with thenatural environment, or, for that matter, with one another.

Yet amidst this tumult and imperfection, and in part because of it, liessomething vibrant and beautiful. This vitality is clearly revealed through

Continued on p.4

Gregoire Declares First

Roadless Recreation Week

 To encourage Washingtonians to get out andenjoy Washington’s 2 million acres of roadless

forest, Gov. Gregoire joined several other gover-

nors across the country in proclaiming August 7

through 15 as Roadless Recreation Week. Stew-

ardship events held during the week highlighted

the importance of the Roadless Area Conserva-

tion Rule, a policy that protects nearly 60 million

acres of pristine forests across the country. t

State Trails Conference to

Explore Connection Between

Backyard, Backcountry

 The 2010 Washington State Trails Conference will

be held October 22-23 in Tacoma, Washington.

 The conference’s theme is “From Backyard

to Backcountry and the Trail Between” and

the event is structured into three tracks. The

“backcountry” topics include sustainable trail

construction methods and planning for heavy

recreational use. “Backyard” sessions focus on

active transportation, trail projects that get

people from home to work and school. “The Trail

Between” sessions focus on those issues that

relate to all trails, whether they are paved urbanroutes or dirt paths in the wilderness.

WTA’s youth programs coordinator, Krista

Dooley, will be one of three presenters leading a

session titled, “Listening to Young People: What

Brings Them Outdoors and onto Trails?”

 The conference draws trail advocates, planners,

funders, builders, recreationists and volunteers.

Anyone “with a zeal for trails and the opportuni-

ties they afford” is invited to attend. t

Trail Briefs »

8/19/2019 From Fish to Forest WA Trails 09-10

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6 » Backcountry  September + October 2010 » Washington Trails www.wta.o

From Fish to ForestContinued from p.10

 the essays and the profiles of Tongass residents. Their stories and perspectives differ, but one es-sential aspect of their lives binds them. All live close to the land, as much by design as by necessityWhether naturalist, seaplane pilot, miller, fisherman, guide or biologist, their livelihoods are rootedin this place and tied inextricably to the natural resources that seem, impossibly, at once inexhaustible and imperiled.

Abundance and vulnerability are reflected as well in Ms. Gulick’s photographs, the most satisfy-ing of which do not depict grand vistas or wildlife in action but images more elemental: the freshimprint of a grizzly paw, a deer skeleton on a gravel bar, a salmon carcass draped over the trunk ofa fallen tree. More startling than awe-inspiring, these images reveal the primeval nature of the Tongass. They assure us that there are places on earth that, despite our best and worst efforts, remain

untamed.

 Salmon in the Trees doesn’t fully realize its goal of a true-to-life portrait, however, because itsidesteps one dimension of southeast Alaskan life that can’t fairly be ignored. Today, 9 out of every10 visitors to Alaska’s capital come by cruise ship. In a mere three decades, the cruise industry has

 transformed the region’s economy. In southeast Alaska alone, the industry now generates $1.35 bil -lion in annual offshore revenues and is directly responsible for nearly 15,000 jobs. Like the extractivindustries that previously drove the regional economy, it has also had impacts on the environment

and, more noticeably, local culture. Concerns about these impacts led residents in 2006 to pass aballot initiative imposing new fees and taxes on cruise operators. Hundreds of towns, cities, cham-bers of commerce and civic groups opposed the initiative. Their fears that it would cause tourism

revenues to stagnate appear to have been well-founded as the State projects a 14 percent drop incruise passenger travel this year, with losses in visitor spending of $150 million.

However Alaskans decide to meet this challenge, another will almost certain ly rise to replace it.It seems the nature of this place that life here is uneasy and precarious. In a letter to contributing

illustrator Ray Troll that closes the book, novelist John Straley proffers this hopeful plea for the Tongass: “Long may it last: the big old trees still standing, the bugs, the fish, the bears, and the flawedand saintly people who want to live a sensual life in this everything place.” For those who have evewondered about that life, Salmon in the Trees offers a taste. t

Stephen Tan is W TA’s vice-president of advocacy.

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