BEING A GUIDE on the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula calls for more than just a big hat, a rubber boat and a can of pepper spray.
You need to be in tune with your environment and understand the complex interactions of every facet of the ecosystem, between the tiniest insects and the largest trees in this wonder of nature we call the rainforest.
Once a person becomes one with nature, it’s disturbing to see the degradation of this pristine environment despoiled for profit by an uncaring industry with no regard for today’s tough environmental standards.
That’s why I became a wilderness gossip columnist. If I see something, I say something and the time for silence is over.
I remember it like it was yesterday. That’s because it was.
Floating the river, I noticed something was wrong with the water. A small tributary was pouring brown sludge into the crystal blue water. Where juvenile salmon had just emerged from their fetal gravels to embark on a journey that would take them to the far reaches of the northern sea and back to their natal stream. Where baby mergansers were trying to catch the baby salmon and not having much luck in the murk of the brown water.
Something was really wrong.
A small tributary was running mud brown sludge into the crystal blue water of the wilderness river.
I wondered what sort of environmental criminal would mud up a creek in this enlightened age of strict environmental legislation, so I walked upstream with blood in my eye to find out.
What I saw was a textbook example of environmental degradation.
Trees were being cut right on the shore of the creek. Whoever was cutting these trees must have been a real greenhorn.
You could tell from the high, ragged stumps that looked like something from the bad old days of logging when we didn’t care how much timber we wasted.
The trees were dropped right in the water, so it was no wonder the creek was running pure mud.
Even worse, whoever cut this timber didn’t even bother to truck it to town.
All of the wood was dumped in the creek and half covered with mud. It was an ugly mess that choked off the stream so tight not even a bull trout could wiggle through.
What was once a virgin stream in the pristine wilderness had been transformed into a stagnant pond with an unsightly brush pile sticking out in the middle of it.
“Beavers.” My fancy friend said. I knew that.
We owe the beavers a huge debt of gratitude. The history of America was financed by the beaver. The beaver paid with their hides.
The United States claimed what we now call the Pacific Northwest based on the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Robert Gray in 1792, where he traded some iron chisels for 300 beaver hides.
This set off the treachery, slaughter and genocide known as the fur trade.
In 1849, two Hudson Bay trappers, John Everett and John Sutherland, were the first known, permanent Europeans to settle on the Olympic Peninsula. They paddled a canoe across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Victoria to Crescent Beach, where they were adopted by the S’Klallam.
If you’re lucky, you can still find a beaver pond and watch them work.
Beavers are a friend of the salmon.
Beaver ponds are fish hatcheries. They offer a refuge from winter floods and summer low water.
Compare this to humanity’s lame, billion-dollar excuses for salmon restoration.
Beavers are not only smarter than people, they work for free.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
