Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

It's hard to believe, but fall is here already. Actually it was starting to feel like fall several weeks ago when it was still August. I didn't really want to acknowledge it then, but it can't be denied. You wake up one morning and it just feels different. There is a chill in the air and the cottonwood trees start to show yellow in the leaves. The wind blows and you have to reach for a jacket when just days ago you were peeling off the layers because of the heat. I'm not sure I'm ready for summer to end. I'd like to catch more fish, maybe sit out on the lounge chairs on the front porch and talk to folks walking up and down the street and barbeque a few more salmon. I want to grab for the summer as it slips away and plead with it to stay just a little longer, but the days are getting shorter, the fish are getting fewer as they make their way up the creeks and rivers and my internal clock is saying its time to slow down. I wouldn't mind the fall if I knew tha...

Over the course of the summer I have lamented the lack of rainfall that we have had. While it was wonderful to wake up every day to sunny skies and to view the glorious sunsets that we enjoyed every evening, none the less we do live in a rain forest and the lack of rain was starting to have an impact on the vegetation. Frankly, I was worried that there wouldn't be enough water in the streams for the salmon to make it up to spawn. I watched one sow brown bear with a cub pacing back and forth across the rocks at the mouth of a small stream bed in Lisianski Inlet a few weeks ago. They could plainly see dozens of pink salmon jumping in front of the stream right in front of them, but they couldn't reach them. The salmon didn't fare any better. They were responding to that ancient need to procreate and were waiting in the inlet for enough water to make it up the stream, but there was none. Well.... there's no problem with that now. For the past few weeks we've had rainfal...