Ketchikan- A River Runs Through It

Ketchikan Field Notes · The Urge to Merge

Alaska Salmon

Hundreds of miles upstream, against the current, with a single purpose: sex, certainly—but also life.

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Ordinary World

The Call

Answer the Call

Foreign Land

Trials

The Elixir

Why do they do it? The urge to merge.

The Call

Against the Current

The Pacific Northwest Salmon Hell-bent on travelling hundreds of miles upstream against the current.

A River Runs Through It Eventually, all things merge into one.

Any fish can achieve failure and get caught. But a salmon fiasco is a disaster of epic proportions.

I witness this programming and it makes me feel more alive because it did not happen to me.

The run is not graceful. It is compulsory, exhausting, risky and magnificent.

Trials

Then Come the Bears

To make matters worse, young bears bulk up on salmon for a long winter’s sleep.

Nature is not sentimental about the hero’s journey. One creature’s return is another creature’s breakfast.

Foreign Land

Back in Ketchikan

Spread Wings of the Eagle Ketchikan’s Tlingit name is associated with wings spread wide.

Back in Ketchikan, I am minutes by floatplane from Misty Fjords and the Tongass National Rainforest.

Timber harvesting is all but over. The environmental narrative now defines the place.

Tongass may not match the Amazon’s biodiversity, but it is denser and the largest national forest in the United States.

The Deep Forest

Misty Fjords and Tongass

Among Salmon, Deer, Black Bears and Trees The forest is not scenery. It is the operating system.

The Return

And I Say It’s Alright

Five days a year there is pure sunshine. The rest are liquid.

The Ketchikan–Misty Fjords Ranger District encompasses temperate rainforest, mountain peaks, glaciers, alpine tundra, muskegs, lakes, rivers and streams.

Time to take a hike and listen to the Beatles.

The first tune I learned on guitar was “Horse With No Name.” The second was “Here Comes the Sun.” It is light, simple and still my favourite George Harrison song.

Now where is my guitar? Oh yes—gently weeping.

YESterday Cold and rainy.

Here Comes the Well-Deserved Sun Rare enough to feel like revelation.

The Elixir

The salmon fights upstream, the bear waits, the rainforest drinks, and the sun arrives only after everyone has earned it.

Ketchikan turns biology into metaphor: life is an urge to merge, a refusal to drift with the current, and a willingness to keep moving even when the river, the rain and the bears have other plans.