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The rain falls gently on the black cottonwoods, rattling on every furled and mottled leaf, on every twig and gnarl of bark so that the air hisses with a soft radio static. The lichens that drape from the old branches glisten in yellow and silver. A gust of wind shakes the trees and heavy drops spatter on the river below, breaking the mirrored images so the reflected forest seems to pulse. Somewhere, far away in the estuary, on the edge of the sea, trumpeter swans are calling and their voices are lifted and dispersed by the wind. No matter how cold the east wind blows in the months ahead, the birds will stay. They are home for the winter. Ponds are freezing at night now and waterfalls are turning to ice high on the mountains. For the Nuxalk, (pron. New-Halk) this bleak month was a time for ceremonies; this was the Moon of Dances. They settled in their dark, smoky longhouses, rich with the smell of cedar and dried salmon, to wait for spring and celebrate their good fortune with pounding drums, chants and spectral dances, for they had been born into a world of plenty. November is a time when most fly fishermen reluctantly put away their rods, sensing in the act a passing of time, for the season is over and the river is empty. But once, not so very long ago, you could fly fish in the Bella Coola River late into November with a good chance of hooking a fresh run steelhead, a fish so hard and clean it seemed carved from ice. This was the last run of the year, coming in from the dark Pacific under the cover of storm clouds, running up with showers of numbing rain while the native villages slept and the forest lay silent. They were the most secretive and perhaps the most beautiful of all the salmon and catching one would revitalize any tired soul. Over the past few decades, however, the number of late running fish has declined dramatically. About 400 used to arrive in November, moving quickly up from the estuary to hold in the upper Bella Coola and lower Atnarko. It is thought only a handful remain now. The fall fish weren’t just late running summer fish, they were and are if they still exist, a distinct subspecies. They had riper eggs and heavier milt sacs than the earlier summer steelhead. They traveled more rapidly upstream and fed less than the earlier migrants. But they would take a fly -- and when they did they fought wildly, as if ignited with the energy of an electrical storm. They had pale green backs and bright silver flanks tinged with pink . Their bellies were as white as swan down. They were stunningly attractive and the promise of them made even the coldest days worth braving. Not only has the late fall run declined badly over recent years, but the Bella Coola itself has shown signs of deterioration. Each fall the river seems to flood a little faster, to become turbid when it once ran clear. After a heavy rainstorm , the Bella Coola blows out quickly, turning a dark brown color. And those who have fished the river for the past 20 or 30 years say it takes a lot longer for the dirty water to settle. The silt that clouds the Bella Coola these days is not glacial flower, ground from the mountain tops, but rather it is rich topsoil, gritty and dark. It is eroded from a thousand cuts. Rivulets spring to life in the scars left by bulldozer blades, in the depressions made by back-hoe tracks, in ditches scraped into the hillsides and from roadways troweled through the earth by gigantic machines. Feeding into this intricate network of unintended canals, streams and water courses are barren slopes, where logging has stripped away the forest. Although the Bella Coola’s upper watershed lies protected in Tweedsmuir Park, extensive logging has taken place in the lower valley and up many of the tributaries. The raw, zig-zag road patterns show the forest industry’s trail of relentless pursuit and down those roads, when it rains, the mountains move. Driving up the main valley on a day that dawned clear and crisp after a night’s rain, a convoy of three logging trucks suddenly rushes past, headed for Bella Coola. They send out an air blast that rocks my Toyota 4Runner. For a moment a whiff of spruce saturates the air and then it is gone. In my rear-view mirror I see the raw butt ends of the trunks, trailing from the last truck. A few branches stick up, like turkey feathers on a plucked fowl. Flecks of bark shower across the highway. . . .
About 25 km east of Bella Coola the Salloomt River pours down a steep valley, crashing from one rocky pocket of water to the next. To get to the mouth of the river you drive up the Bella Coola Valley, past Hagensborg, turn north to cross the Bella Coola and then double back until you reach a bridge over the noisy Salloomt. Just downstream you can see where the small river, with a lick and a swirl, enters the main river. A trail leads through the woods to where the waters join. My breath rises like mist as I set out, the fly line slapping against my rod with each step. Most the leaves have fallen from the alders, birch and other deciduous trees that grow in profusion along the path. In the bare branches I can see some of the nests birds have made, using lichen, spider webs, grass, the down from their own breasts and seed thistles. Suspended between a fork, far out on the branch of an alder is the delicate nest of a warbling vireo. In a fork in the trunk of a willow shrub, about two feet off the ground, is the tiny, compact, cup-shaped nest of a yellow warbler. I kneel to examine it. The outer part of the nest is made of dried yellow grass and shredded red cedar, neatly woven together. You can’t help but wonder if this is where the Nuxalk first got the idea of weaving bark to create clothes and baskets. Higher up in an alder is the bulky, stick nest of a crow, solid and utilitarian. I walked past this site a dozen times last spring, unaware of the silent, nesting birds which were just a few feet away. A week ago, the Salloomt River ran clear and low, but now the rains have turned the water brown. Visibility in the Bella Coola River has dropped as well, as the tributaries blow mud into the main river. A few weeks earlier, the river banks were littered with the remains of thousands of rotting chum and pink salmon. But now all that remains are a few gill covers, broken fragments of vertebrae, the occasional salmon tail and rag-like pieces of skin caught on snags. Scavengers and a few autumn freshets have swept most the dead away. From the mouth of Salloomt I can see where the Nooklikonnik, Snootli and Thorsen creeks all flow down to join the Bella Coola. The side valleys are all steep. Snow covers the upper mountains, folding down to just below the dark tree line. Braids of water flow into the blackness of the forest. In the lower part of the valleys, the old clearcuts look ragged and grey because of the bare branches of the deciduous trees. Soon they will be deep in snow and the erosion will stop. Until spring. . . The reasons given for the decline of the Salloomt’s runs are familiar. The pink salmon commercial fishery is suspected of wiping out the sea-run cutthroat. The cutthroat migrated with the Atnarko pinks and were just the right size to get tangled in the commercial nets. Local sports anglers killed their share of fish and logging had untold impact on the Salloomt’s spawning beds. Logging of the lower Salloomt River began in 1951 and continued into the late 1960's. Trees were cut from the river edge far up onto the hillsides. After the lower valley was logged, cutting moved farther upstream, where it is still taking place. For more than 40 years, muck has been pouring into the river. As I wade out to cast, the silt from a distant slope washes around my boots and they soon disappear in a swirl of brown water. Perhaps to suit the mood as much as to match the hatch, I tie on a small white fly that imitates the maggots which can be found feeding on rotting salmon carcasses. An egg fly would work just as well, because coho are still spawning in the tributaries and the cutthroat are watching for roe rolling past in the current. But somehow the white fly selects itself. It happens that way.
[Excerpted from River of the Angry Moon. By Mark Hume with Harvey Thommasen. Released by University of Washington Press in the United States and by Douglas & McIntyre in Canada.] |
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Story by By Mark Hume
