Adam Weymouth - Kings of the Yukon: A River Journey in Search of the Chinook

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Adam Weymouth writes of the Yukon River, the salmon and the people, with language that flows and ripples like the water he describes. There may be a smoothness to the words, but pay attention, there are deep undercurrents here. You can hear the water dripping from his paddle between each stroke as he travels that river. It mingles with the voices of the many people he visits along its shores.

I have an affinity for that river. I once sat on a hill overlooking it outside of Pelly Crossing, Yukon, and prayed, and the Yukon River was in my prayers. Before I began my vision quest, an Elder of the Northern Tutchone People spoke to her ancestors, telling them why I was going to be there and asking them to watch out for me. I appreciate Adams nervousness about grizzly bears. We saw fresh tracks of one on the way up the hill and I knew that after a few days without food and water I might not have the strength to run if a bear came by.

Adam might be from England, but he visits like an Indian. He comes into your house, eats whatever food is offered, makes himself at home, and most importantly he listens. One of our teachings is to learn to listen with your heart. I dont know where Adam learned this skill, but he obviously practises it. When you listen with your heart you hear more than words, you hear the other persons spirit. I hear old Percy Henry of Dawson who remembered the prophecy: the day will come when there are no more ducks. In his voice I hear my own mother tell of a time when there were so many black ducks here in northern Saskatchewan that the sky turned dark. Percy lived long enough to see the end of timesnot only the end of the ducks, but the end of the salmon, and the end of his peoples connection to the river and to the land.

I hear Mary Jackson and feel her homesickness for the place further down river where, when a king salmon is smoked, it drips with oil and goodness. And, Richard Carroll shared his salmon, the first of the year, because the real good hunters share. Adam visited and listened to these and many other people along that river.

The story most importantly is about the salmon, the Chinook, the king salmon. Adam shared his breakfast porridge with young Chinook still in the parr stage, only a few months old, at the head waters of the Yukon River and then followed them to the ocean. You cannot tell the story of the salmon without telling of the people standing on the shore looking out across the water, waiting and waiting for the fish that might not come.

Why dont they come back? Did we forget to put their bones back in the river? Did we stop respecting them? Will they ever come back? We know. We have always known. What we do to the land, what we do to the river, what we do to the air, we do also to ourselves. Thats the law. That has always been the law. And the law is not going to change because we forgot it.

HAROLD R. JOHNSON is a lawyer, a trapper, a fisherman, a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation and author of several books including Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (and Yours).