RIVERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Posted In: Taku

Giving thanks to the Taku and its defenders

It was Thanksgiving Day in Canada yesterday and my family and I were very thankful for the King salmon dinner we sat down to. The giant King was caught in late July by a Taku River Tlingit friend who commercially fishes the river. At the end of a spectacular raft trip on the Nakina and Taku rivers, she and her Dad shuttled me off river across Taku Inlet and up to Juneau. How could I resist taking this amazing fish off of her hands? True to the One Hundred Mile Diet that my brother and Alisa Smith have popularized, the salmon fillets were accompanied by sauce made from loganberries that my family and I picked a few miles from our house. The potatoes were from an unused plot across the street that our good neighbour allowed us to make use of. The steamed kale came from the flower garden in our front yard. The wine … well, we’re working on local Yukon wine, and in any case I digress.

We dined, giving special thanks to the great Taku river that produced the great fish. The Taku River Tlingit First Nation was also in our thoughts, since they have protected and stewarded the river through the millenia, ensuring that salmon like this one always have rich and untrammeled habitat to come home to after their years at sea. I also gave a thought and thanks to the many people over many years who have done things great and small to ensure that the great coastal transboundary wilderness remains magnificent, whole and dense with fish and wildlife. Those people number in the thousands, and it is only by their numbers and their hard work that the Taku, Iskut-Stikine, Unuk and Whiting Rivers shared by BC and Alaska have not yet been diminished and fragmented as have so many drainages further south. Thanks to all of you, and I hope that in the coming weeks and months you still have energy for this magnificent place! It will require all of us combining forces to see this incredible landscape through the challenges of the coming few years. I still owe a blog on that subject, and it will indeed be coming shortly.