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| copyright Corey Radis |
It
was my own suggestion that we do a day paddle down to the bottom of the fjord,
rather than pack up camp and move down there for the night. I just thought it
would be a lot less hectic. Our camp was an assemblage of tents and tarps
pitched on a promontory of trees rising up out of Waterfall Cove. The location
was chosen for bear safety, which is always of utmost concern in this country.
Maritime Southeast Alaska has about the highest density of brown bears in the
world, rivaled only by Kodiak Island some hundred miles to the West. The brown
bear is genetically identical to the grizzly of the Rocky Mountains, but larger
due to her rich diet of salmon which arrive to spawn annually in the many
waterways of this very wet country. By setting up camp on an outcrop projecting
into the sea, we hoped to minimize ursine traffic through our dwelling. The
whole thing was ringed by three strands of electric fence with a battery
powered charger. I was personally responsible for erecting this barrier and
testing its function by submitting to electric shocks. The current isn't very
strong, but bears lead with their noses, and the hope is that a shock to the
moist sniffer is just enough of a deterent.
We
were a crew of six on a wilderness research mission. The team leader was Gregg
of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, a Montana nonprofit that
facilitates citizen science. He and I had stood together piece of remote ground
the year before along with Lauren, an ecologist who designed the project. The
study is an investigation of the forest's response to mass the die-off of yellow
cedar which affects the most of that species' range along the Northwest Coast. We
did about seven weeks of fieldwork last summer, one of the wettest on record,
no small claim for in this country of dripping temperate rainforest. The rain was incessant, mold grew in
all of our clothes, and Gregg ripped the crotches out of three pairs of
waterproof pants while bushwhacking. We'd gone our separate ways for the
offseason, me to bus tables and study chemistry in Chicago, Gregg to track
wolverines on Nordic skis in Mongolia. Summer brought would see us meet again.
I accepted his invitation to join the team at the last minute and flew up to
Sitka on the 5th of July, with bits of corn on the cob still stuck in my teeth.
*******************
"We're
all gonna get mercury poisoning on this trip," Gregg says as we prepare
dinner. It's true that we are eating an inordinate amount of salmon, which have
sadly been documented to bioaccumulate the toxic metal from the ocean. But
deliciousness overwhelms concern about toxic exposure. We thought we would be
too early to catch many fish, since their stream runs haven't really started.
To our pleasant surprise the salmon that are massing up outside the estuaries are
biting assertively. Gregg has a $20 spinning rod picked up in Sitka, and two of
his Montana crew brought fly gear. Together they are slaying them. By day three
we are accustomed to fire roasted pink salmon to go along with our little
baggies of dehydrated soup mix. Pinks are not considered the best eating of the
five species of Pacific salmon, but given our rustic situation they delight the
palate and fortify the bones. Dolly Varden char and rockfish are also on the
menu.
I
am mulling over how to suggest a change in our trip plan while we rattle the
tinfoil and pots. I'm just a worker bee here, not looking to upset carefully
coordinated plans. On the other hand, I am the only one who is working on this
project for the third year, and I consider myself an expert in data collection
logistics. And I don't want to move the camp.
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