Totem Salmon : Life Lessons from Another Species

Freeman House lives in an out-of-the-way place. Tucked away where Highway 101 diverts inland from the Northern California coastline to avoid the 4,000-foot peaks of the King Range is a damp, verdant landscape of rolling hills, towering forests, and isolated pockets of humanity. The Mattole River drains much of the area, greeting the Pacific at the Lost Coast. For thousands of years, the river formed the connective tissue of human settlement--first for the native tribes, and later for Euro-American pioneers. Each year, salmon swam up the river to their natal spawning beds, marking the passage of time and providing sustenance for the people along the banks. Then, in the early 1970s, the salmon stopped returning. House found himself banding with other like-minded citizens in an effort to bring the once-prolific runs back. Their organization fought for curbs on logging in the watershed and more restrictions for the way timber can be harvested (buffer zones along streams, for example). They planted vegetation on the banks to provide shade and added structure to the river for protection.

Totem Salmon is House's memoir of river stewardship. It's also a blueprint for grassroots environmental action. And finally, it is a well-crafted and lyrical piece of writing that treats a regional problem with personal perspective and candor. --Langdon Cook