A Temporary Refuge: Fourteen Seasons with Wild Summer Steelhead

PREFACE

A PERCH

AS I WAKE, I BECOME AWARE of the shovel-scraping-asphalt croak of a blue heron, or the brilliant complex cascading song of the winter wren, or the yammering calls of the kingfisher being chased by an accipiter. In the fall a flock of kinglets, moving through the trees and shrubs surrounding our camp, deliver their pure, clear whistles. From the pool comes the splash of a steelhead turning. The rain dropping to the tarps from the giant fir that has grown old at the edge of the creek makes its own sound.

I am reasonably sure, however, what wakes Sis, my fifteen-year-old heeler companion, are the vibrations of my movement toward the front end of the Airstream trailer. Though happy and spry—still able to take stair steps three at a bound on a good afternoon—she has become largely deaf. As a backdrop, the main creek is almost booming if it is in spate, or burbling with musical overtones when it is low enough for boulders to surface in the riffles below the pool.

Sis and I negotiate the short zigzag trail down to the viewing area, a small terrace carved out fifteen feet above the creek. We settle on a wooden observation platform constructed next to the base of a twisted old-growth fir. This is our perch. It is located over the middle of a moderate-sized pool that—from late spring through late autumn— contains an average of about 150 wild summer steelhead. From our perch, we can see the steelhead fifty to eighty feet away in water that is usually clear enough to determine, for instance, whether an individual is a male or a female. Once the cooler days and nights of autumn arrive, the clarity of the creek becomes such that I can even tell which way a steelhead is looking.

For seventeen years I have spent much of my time from mid-May through early to middle December seated at this perch, watching the fish and whatever else is happening around the pool. These large groups of steelhead had been a target of poaching for more than fifty years prior, after logging roads were extended into the middle reaches of this basin. We form a deterrent to this activity, once so pervasive that locally the pool is called The Dynamite Hole. The explosions used to happen once or twice a year, leading to multiple snags. Beyond the dynamiting, the frequency of poaching, on and off all season long, caused serious damage to the populations of wild summer steelhead.

Lest we come down too hard on local people in this regard, we should bear in mind that the smaller and smaller numbers of wild adult salmon returning to their natal streams and the loss of local breeding populations along the eastern edge of the North Pacific was not brought about by poaching ... or by seals or otters ... or, for that matter, by the gill nets of indigenous peoples. The fundamental problem continues to be our blind reliance on hatcheries, our continuing industrial assault on primal ecologies, and our population numbers. So the summer steelhead have found their refuge, and this refuge needs a caretaker. Presently, Sis and I fulfill that duty, and we know we are lucky to have the opportunity to do something that is altogether so straightforward, so positive, and so helpful to these wild fish we have grown to admire. We are lucky, as well, to be able to live so simply during our time here.

The summer steelhead gather in this pool each season because it is a haven from the heated stream flows of summer and from the low flows of late summer and autumn. If this Western Cascades creek contained no cool deep refuges, no steelhead would be able to hold in the creek from early summer through late autumn.

The last dynamiting event occurred at the pool in the early 1990s. People began to volunteer to spend the night up here after that. Our first stay was several years later, in 1996. During those early years, people would sign up ahead of time for a day here or two days there. When Sis and I came to the pool, we would usually arrive in the late afternoon or in the early evening to set up a cot behind the truck—with Sis’s bed under it. My memories of these nights do not include heroic escapades saving steelhead because, as it was then and is also now, the human presence is the deterrent. I do remember many times drifting off to sleep watching the brilliant array of stars centered around the Milky Way. In those early days at the pool, the time spent was short and mostly involved camp duties.

By the late 1990s, it had become clear that such ad hoc coverage left gaps that poachers were exploiting. Snarls of heavy-duty monofilament line and other debris left behind by poachers were being found around the pool. The North Umpqua Foundation gradually took over the elaborate organizational effort. The Foundation managed to transform a diverse gang of concerned volunteers into a necessarily smaller set of people who made a commitment for longer periods of time, with fewer gaps between stays. As part of this process, the Foundation began offering a per diem allowance to people who spent time at the pool.

By 1998, the Foundation formalized the per diem amount and the time to be spent on site—twelve out of each twenty-four hours, including sleeping time—and it was actively attempting to recruit a person who would undertake the responsibility for the entire period that wild summer steelhead used the refuge pool. I was among those asked if I could stay at the pool, but I was unable to do so that year. I had a report-writing commitment to the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation. By late summer, however, I had fulfilled my obligation to the tribes, so Sis and I spent the last eighteen days of November at the pool, leaving after the steelhead had left. That winter, the Foundation and I agreed that I would stay at the refuge pool for the whole of the upcoming season.

The first day of that season, I realized that the pool represented an unusual opportunity to take notes on whatever these wild summer steelhead did. Note taking and observation are what I had spent more than twenty-five years doing as a prehistoric field archeologist. Not only was I comfortable working out of a field camp, but I was peculiarly trained to document the unknown.

For the previous four or five years, I had been spending fifty to a hundred days each summer and fall casting flies to steelhead in the North Umpqua, and my interest in this species of Pacific salmon was fully developed, though I had far more questions than answers. Plainly, so did everyone else. In the more than seventeen years that I had been casting flies for these fish, the how-tos and the whys of steelhead and flies had accumulated in random layers of half-truths.

By this time I have spent more than 3,400 days, mostly without a fly rod in my hand, just sitting with the wild steelhead at the pool. I can now leaven most angling myths with natural history observations. I have typed up sixteen seasonal volumes, which can be examined on The North Umpqua Foundation website.

I need to point out a primary characteristic of this type of natural history writing, which is based on observations of no more than a few square miles and is organized by month. While natural cycles organized around seasonal change repeat themselves, the playing out of a given cycle for a given creature on a given year may not happen. A colder or warmer or drier or wetter season, a fire, a flood—each of these circumstances and others can affect the timing of a given life-cycle event, if it happens at all. It is this uncertainty that keeps the interacting ecologies and wild denizens resilient, adaptive, and strong.

Wild summer steelhead are the focus of this book. Wild steelhead are fish that have propagated and reared themselves without any help from us. Hatchery programs and the fish they make are clearly the greatest danger faced by wild Pacific salmon populations—including summer steelhead.

I have not chosen to name the relevant creeks, but only to call them the main creek and the colder tributary creek. The reason for this is that I do not want to encourage you to visit. Presently, I record at least 1,500 visits each season. If these visits were to significantly increase in number, this could have negative consequences for the summer steelhead holding in this refuge pool.

Finally, any discussion of natural history is difficult without some mention of ultimate causes. I believe that evolution developed and exists as a natural process and has no purpose or direction. It is simply a word used for a process of organized change based on the fundamental mutable structure of life on this planet in association with the basic changeability of the universe. Each creature is an equally perfect summation of three billion–plus years of interaction with organic and inorganic, biotic and abiotic environments on this planet.

I trust that, before it is too late, we can leave the wild populations of these fish alone to do what they need to survive as natural breeding populations. While this species may not know what is best for itself, we have shown that we certainly do not know. A careful look around at the comprehensive shambles we have made of this world, in general, and wild Pacific salmon recovery, in particular, makes this abundantly clear.

My good dog Sis nearly made it through the first ten seasons at the refuge pool. Because she was the perfect companion, I will continue to reference myself now and then as Sis and I in this book, as I often did in my natural history notes and letters while she was with me. This is perhaps an undue idiosyncrasy, but she was a singular creature. My new dog, Maggie, is working out well, but this book is Sis’s.

Sis and my seasonal stays at the pool are made possible with per diem supplied by The North Umpqua Foundation, a local nonprofit organization. The USDA Forest Service is also an active partner in this effort. The Foundation, bless them, also comes up with a stipend so that I can more easily have the time to transcribe my notes during the five months I am off the pool.

A final note: the terms left and right as used in stream-left or stream-right are referenced as though you are looking downstream. Also, nearside means downstream-left and far-bank means downstream-right.

CHAPTER ONE

MAY

SIX YEARS AFTER FINDING each other on the Owyhee Plateau, Sis and I began our season-long stays at the refuge pool. We arrive at the pool around the middle of May. As a kindness to the Foundation, during our first years here, the late and very helpful Mike Marchando towed the Foundation’s twenty-five-foot Airstream trailer up to the pool, and the gas company put a full 125-gallon propane tank beside it. The trailer is placed near the creek edge of the flat next to a very large Douglas fir that has grown old here. I wonder about this towering tree on windy nights and during lightning storms ... and when it is laden with snow, yet would have it no other way. And, really, no matter where I put the trailer, some giant old tree could fall on it.

Smaller firs, cedars, a towering sugar pine, dogwoods, cascaras, chinkapins, vine maples, and some small broad-leaved maples make up the rest of the larger riparian vegetation that is crowded along the creek side of the flat. Away from the pool, here and there along the main creek, are large broad-leaved maples and a black cottonwood or two, the tallest of the native hardwoods in the Pacific Northwest. Serviceberries, two species of ceanothus, viburnum, Oregon grape, wild rose, and salal make up the common smaller woody vegetation. Grasses, wild blackberry, yerba de selva, moss, some ferns, and lichens make up the ground cover along with a variety of annuals and perennials, such as bear grass.

It takes me several days to get the trailer and camp in order. I gather the furniture, put it together, and set up on the small narrow shelf—the viewing area—above the pool. This natural creek terrace is about fifteen feet above the stream surface.

Our perch is constructed close to the base of an old pistol-grip fir that curves eccentrically from the downstream edge of the viewing area. Its root structure curves up along the surface in such a way as to form a good support for a platform. Being seated next to this tree has an added advantage: It shields us somewhat from being easily seen by the steelhead and the other creatures on this stretch of creek.

This perch of ours is no blind, though. The steelhead and most creatures know Sis and I are here. Unless the steelhead are sleeping, no matter when or how softly I come down the trail to this perch and regardless of how dark it is, I am greeted by a steelhead surfacing to take a look at me.

During the first week or two, when I first see a local creature at the pool, it will often come quite close to us and take a good look. Robins, kingfishers, sharp-shinned hawks, dippers, Townsend’s solitaires, ospreys, nighthawks, blue herons, a midday bat, and spotted skunks have flown or strode to within a few feet of us at our perch. Beavers and otters position themselves out in the part of the pool that allows them a good view of the perch. I don’t know whether these creatures examine the perch when we aren’t present, but after this initial dalliance, most of them do not come nearly as close again during the season.

I fly two layers of tarps over the part of the viewing area I use. Large tarps protect Sis and me, and visitors, from the hot late-afternoon sun at midsummer and the rains of spring, fall, and winter. The support structure for the tarps has gone from lengths of bamboo to fir one-by-twos and cedar two-by-fours. During our first few seasons here, the light brief snows of late November and December would collapse the tarps and make a mess. More recently, I’ve been taking everything down and storing it in a local garage around the middle of November.

I have constructed several benches in the viewing area for the public. These were built during the first season as I gradually realized that lots of people, especially old people, were in the habit of visiting the pool to see the steelhead. Later it became clear that the fish in the pool were less disturbed when people used the benches rather than standing out at the front of the viewing area.

Our perch has also expanded into a space with a shelf for books and binoculars, along with a desk surface on which I can settle a book and hold it open with a piece of twenty-pound tippet and a rubber band or two. At the right side of this desk is a sloping surface where I lay out a notebook for observations. It takes me about a week to put everything in place.

This pool is located about 150 miles from the coast and 1,600 feet above sea level. Of the fish species in this main creek, only the summer steelhead, the spring chinook, and the very small remnants of the lamprey populations native to the creek now make this journey from the ocean to get here. No one seems to know whether winter steelhead use the main creek.

Over the last six to nine million years, the spring snowmelt peak has been used by early-migrating Pacific salmon populations for thousands of generations. Spring chinook and summer steelhead use this snowmelt peak as a pathway that eases them over and around barriers to reach cool havens once summer settles in. Generally speaking, the higher you get in the stream basin, the cooler the water is. In an average year, the first summer steelhead show up at the pool in late May.

In 2012, and for the fourth time in its sixty-year history, the ladder at Steamboat Falls was fixed so that it no longer blocked the first steelhead to show up at the falls. In the ensuing years, the first fresh-run wild summer steelhead have been seen passing through the pool in late May. It is early in the season and only a very small number of steelhead are seen, no matter how keenly Sis looks out over the pool.

HAVING SIS AS A COMPANION during these months and years was a blessing beyond my ability to put into words. I had a dog before Sis, an Australian shepherd named Muchacho. After he died, I was alone for several months before I realized that I was ready to take on another dog. At the time, a private archeological contracting outfit had hired me to run a survey for them on a military bombing range situated atop the 6,500-foot Owyhee Plateau. In Boise, I was pleased to discover that my good friend Jill Wolfe had been hired to be one of my crew chiefs. A few days into the project, in the late afternoon, Jill came to me with an interesting expectant expression on her face. I was wondering what kind of prehistoric site she’d found when she told me that she had run into a Basque cowhand she had met earlier in the summer. His name was Frank Medina, and he had told her that he had a dog to give away; the animal wasn’t working out as a stock dog and he asked if she wanted it. She told him that she didn’t but knew someone who did.

In the early evening, the sound of an engine heralded the arrival of a pack of eight or nine dogs. They were all clearly friendly animals that appeared to expect the best from the people they met. Frank’s flatbed pulled up at the center of our half-acre spread of vehicles and tents. I didn’t see the give-away dog right away with the others milling around. Frank was a stocky man in dusty brown and green horseman’s work clothes.

Then I spotted the small dog. It was chained upright against the back of the cab for no reason that I could see. I later found out she was in heat and Frank was keeping her from being bred. I couldn’t see what kind of dog this small female was. She was black and brown and white, with some red on her; her ears were laid back, and she was wet with vomit. Frank told me a short, garbled story about how the dog had been raised by three women who had given her to him when one of them got engaged. Probably because of the white blaze on her forehead, her name was Star.

When it became apparent that this small dog was the one Frank was giving away, I realized that Muchacho had me thinking in terms of getting another Australian shepherd. I raised my voice above the general hubbub of dogs and crew and told him that I didn’t want her.

Frank didn’t even look at me. He just said, You like this dog. She stay right by you. By this time, the animal was standing beside Frank and he reached down, grabbing her by the scruff and hip skin, and dropped her off the end of the truck bed. Several things then happened at once. The pack surged around the dog and she showed her teeth to no effect, my crew surged in some sort of innate response to the dogs, and I realized that Frank had just pissed me off by handling the dog in that cavalier fashion. The dog herself chose my feet to sit on, her hips against my shins. Her ears still laid back, she looked up and back at me.

There and then, my mind completely changed course. Gazing down at this vulnerable animal sitting on my boots, I told myself I would take this dog on and find a home for her. It was as clear as could be that she wanted to be done with cattle herding.

I looked the dog over. She smelled strongly of horse shit, which she had either been bedding in or eating or both. She was skinny, a twenty-five-pound dog in a thirty-five-pound frame, and I concluded she was about three years old. There was a healed scar that went from the inside corner of her left eye across to the bridge of her nose.

That night, I chained the dog to the bumper of my truck next to my tent and gave her an ancient rag of a Woolrich wool shirt to curl up on. I didn’t want this dog that had thrown up on herself and smelled like horse shit inside the tent.

I fed her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and put down a pan of water. As I crawled into my sleeping bag on my cot and settled back with my book—for some reason I remember it was a Frenchwoman’s biography of Groucho Marx—I thought of how cold it had been getting at night and went to the door of the tent. There was still some light in the sky and the dog was curled up on the shirt. Her eyes were looking at me. Telling myself that she looked uncomfortable, I unhooked her from the chain and coaxed her into the tent, where she went right under the cot, and I pushed the shirt under there with her. I don’t remember the smell being a problem.

Within a few days I had decided I would name her Sis, my nickname for an interesting woman I had a brief affair with, and a name that obviously was still on my mind.

She wasn’t mouthy. That she didn’t playfully gnaw anything or lick caught my attention and I reflected on this now and then, but these reflections had gone nowhere. I remember Sis was laying out with her nose near my feet, presenting her left side to me. For some reason, I reached out and lifted her cheek with my right thumb. All I saw were white tooth fragments and cherry-red gums. I was almost physically sick as I let her cheek fall, not from the apparent injury, but from the discomfort and pain she unquestionably had been living with, stoically, as is the way with dogs.

I waited until the crew came back in the late afternoon and told Jill to take over for the next day, and maybe the day after: I was going into Boise to get Sis to a veterinarian. Sis and I drove out within half an hour to make the several-hour trip to town.

From my motel room the next morning, I found a nearby vet in the yellow pages and brought Sis in to a midmorning appointment. The vet kept Sis and operated on her after work that day. It was a matter of slicing open the gum to remove the tooth fragments and file down the sharp tooth sockets. Sis lost both upper canines and all the upper teeth on the left side of her jaw except for the small back molar.

When I stood talking with this smiling young vet the next morning, with Sis on a leash between us, she told me that the injury was from a kick by a horse or mule about two months before and that the scar at the corner of her eye was probably from the same incident.

SIS GREW TO BE A KEEN OBSERVER of what went on around the pool. In the North Umpqua River are numerous different local breeding populations of summer steelhead. Each population seeks a unique set of gravels, a local stream environment to which they are adapted because their ancestors both reproduced there and lived there during at least the first several months of the freshwater portions of their lives. This multiplicity of populations has kept Pacific salmon around for millions of years and thriving while inhabiting the most tectonically active and thus environmentally uncertain region on the North American continent.

Viewers tend to think of the many wild summer steelhead holding in the pool as one group. In fact, the steelhead represent a minimum of eight local breeding populations, or demes. These populations are all united by the need to return to the middle and upper portions of the main creek containing the refuge pool or to one of the creeks tributary to these portions.

When Sis and I arrive at the refuge pool, the generally mild, wet Northwest winter is over but for a residual coolness and periods of overcast with a few generally minor rains. The annual plants are not very far along. During an average spring, the bear grass may send up a dramatic spike of white flowers and the short-stemmed white iris may be blooming too, but the bright green grasses, which comprise most of them, are just beginning to reach up and spread out. In warm springs, such as the one in 2004 that set warmth and dryness records, most growth is well along and some of the grasses are knee-high. After cold winters, a recently melted layer of snow may have left last season’s standing vegetation crushed to the ground and the new growth is not more than an inch high.

By now some of the summer steelhead eggs laid in February are alevins, or yolk-sac fry, and have already spread into the substrate, working themselves away from their nests through the dark interstices of the streambed gravels. The spaces between the gravels are their first migration medium. It is as though the fish have abandoned the thin transparent skins of their eggs for the protection of the more armored skin that is the bed of their natal stream. Under conditions of increasing warmth, the alevins may begin to feed on small organisms they encounter in the gravels. At the same time, the young salmon must avoid their own predators.

During most years, by late May I begin to see steelhead fry holding in small groups at the edge of the main creek. Sometimes, where the creek is shallow and fast, the steelhead fry gather for a time into the egg depressions dug by their mothers that contained her fertilized eggs.

Streambed gravels are biologically quite active, but this early in the spring when temperatures are low, many or most of the animals are yet eggs themselves ... or they are moving very slowly from the cold. The habit of spawning in the headwater reaches of streams means eggs are deposited in an area of cold, clean water that is rich in oxygen because of the high gradient channels found here. Additionally, headwater reaches have relatively few nutrients, which means fewer animals might prey on or compete with the small salmon.

Often, at least one of the previous season’s male steelhead are hanging around this part of