earth view
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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, 
They’ve stopped eating. They’re in their final act – spawning – and they won’t stop pushing upstream until they die. Their instinctive drive to pass on their genes is hammered home to me with every leaping fish. The harpy screams of ravens emanating from the forest jolt my soul. Bald eagles swoop from treetops to rock tops, eyeballing the feast before them. Bears march into the stream with purpose, causing me to stand at attention. They know I’m here, but they seem focused on the fish at hand or at paw. With one eye pressed against the viewfinder and one eye open for bears, I attempt to focus on anything but instead just bask in the present. I’ve never felt more alive. I have a front row seat to one of the greatest shows on Earth, one that plays out every year all over the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska. Just a few days before, there wasn’t a single salmon in this stream. In a few weeks, the only visible evidence of what took place here will be spawned-out carcasses littering the stream banks. The cleanup crews of birds, otters and mink will scour the remains. Heavy fall rains will wash the fish bones out to sea, and bears will curl up in their dens as snow dusts the mountaintops. The show will be over, but the annual payout is rich. Bald eagles, fueled by salmon, will soar greater distances to find food during the lean winter months. Female bears, padded with fat reserves, will give birth in their dens and nurse their tiny cubs with salmon-enriched milk. The forest, fertilized with super-charged soil from decayed fish, will sprout new growth come spring. And the salmon? Those who survived their time in the ocean, dodged the hooks, nets, beaks and jaws of predators, and returned to their birth streams to spawn and die are still here. These salmon live on in frolicking spring cubs, plump blueberries, new growth rings in tree trunks and downy eaglets perched in their nests. And the next generation of salmon is swaddled in the streams and incubated by the forest. The fertilized eggs will soon hatch, ensuring that the cycle of life is a circle, always flowing, never broken. What goes around comes around. The Tongass Circle of Life 
That the modern world has arrived and hasn’t yet broken the circle of life in the 21st century Tongass is nothing short of astounding. But we’re on our way to carving up this extraordinary forest, and it may just be a matter of time. We only have to look south to the once-magnificent salmon rain forests of Washington, Oregon and northern California to see how quickly we can decimate ancient trees, wild salmon and a rich way of life. 
Salmon link the land to the sea and they can’t survive if both aren’t healthy. Neither can we. That scientists have discovered salmon in the trees in the Tongass rain forest tells us that everything is connected. And if we start tossing away the pieces, we eventually unravel the whole glorious show. Long ago, we knew how to live within nature’s constraints. Deep down, I think we still do. We need the Tongass if for no other reason than to connect us to the world as we once knew ourselves. When the circle is whole, so are we. We’ve been given a great gift and an even greater responsibility. The Tongass National Forest is public land entrusted to all of us. I think we can get it right in the Tongass simply because there’s still time to do so, and we know it’s the right thing to do. Let us learn from the lessons that salmon in the trees teach us and ensure that the greatest show on Earth goes on. 
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