A crisp breeze and unsettled skies swept us into Freshwater Bay and graced us with a pre-breakfast rainbow over Pavlof Harbor. The chance that a coastal brown bear might be fishing in the shallows beneath the rushing waterfall drew us ashore for the entire morning.
During the salmon spawning season (mid-July until October) about a dozen bears share this picturesque stream, fishing for fatty protein-rich salmon to sustain them through their winter’s sleep. Flocks of mew and glaucous-winged gulls produced a raucous and discordant cacophony – the perfect backdrop for this wild Alaskan scene. Pink or humpy salmon wriggled in the shallows attempting to fulfill their destiny at a spawning site, while leaping silvery salmon bodies (likely sockeye) flashed against the white foam of the waterfall, leaping upward into a succession of pools in hopes of reaching the lake. Four of the five species of Pacific salmon spawn here in Pavlof Creek (pink or humpy, sockeye or red, coho or silver, chum or dog). Dolly Varden and steelhead salmon are reported to be here as well. This is a well-used fishing ground for bears, birds and humans.
For millennia, this stream has been used by the Tlingit people for food gathering. In mid to late summer, an extended family from the village of Angoon would arrive in their great cedar canoes and set up a camp to catch, fillet, dry and smoke the salmon. They also collect salmonberries, blueberries, thimbleberries, sea lettuce and other native foods to see them through the long dark and wet winter months.
As we witness the great annual salmon migration and the complex interdependent connections those heroic fish have created here in the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, we are reminded of our interconnectedness, with our people and our planet.
