The Fish, the Trees, and Us

Well, the end of another work week. I've been working full-time for six and a half months now at KQED and my life has settled into a new routine. I walk to and from work, sit through a lot of meetings, edit some material, occasionally write something myself, and work with young journalists helping them shape some of the first stories of their nascent careers.

A few of of my colleagues are older, people I've known for decades. One of these is Dan Brekke, a fine writer who today posted one of the most beautiful essays on the interconnectedness of all life that I've read in a while.

Ostensibly an article about the Coho salmon that are fighting against extinction here in Northern California, Dan's piece goes way beyond that issue to raise questions that should haunt us all.

The physical site of his piece, which includes video and audio materials, is Lagunitas Creek. I didn't even know it by that name since my niece Elizabeth always called it "Pt. Reyes' Brother" when she was little and my wife and I used to stop there with her on the way home from the beaches of Pt. Reyes.

While the ocean was not necessarily the best place for a little girl to swim, Point Reyes' Brother was just fine. A shallow, slow-moving stream set amidst the few remaining redwoods in an area where most of a magnificent forest had been clear-cut.

The Coho have been spawning here for far longer than we humans have been around. When they swim up the creek to lay their eggs and then die, they have been part of a magnificent ecological balance. Their bodies have long been the fertilizer that vultures spread along the banks and inland from the river.

Some of the mightiest trees on earth rose from that fertilizer.

Meanwhile, year after year, the young Coho splash around in the creek until they are big enough to swim out to sea. On their way they enter the mighty Tomales Bay.

Then the roaring Pacific beyond.

Eventually they return to spawn and die.

Dan's piece describes how fragile their numbers have become and how this year's drought, a dry period of Biblical proportions, almost spelled their doom, until a recent rainstorm allowed a few hundred of them to finally do what they have been doing for millenia.

They are in Point Reyes' Brother now, trying to reproduce, trying to survive.

Their fate hangs in the balance, but so does ours. Because we are inextricably bound up with the Coho and the redwoods and every other living creature on earth, for better or for worse. With our monstrously hiuge brains and appetites, we have been destroying our home for far too long now.

It is time for all of God's children to become environmentalists. Because whatever heaven may exist in your imagination is endangered right before your eyes. Go to Lagunitas Creek, or another site nearer to your home, and consider what I have written here.

Climate change doesn't matter? Only a fool, a fool of the worst kind, would hold to such an opinion. Also a selfish fool, the kind of person who cares only for himself and not for fellow humans, especially our young, who may not even have a fighting chance unless we rapidly change our ways and return as much of our natural environment to its essential form before we, and most other creatures, go extinct.

President's Day Brunch

That's what the kids and I had on this day off of school and work. I like these mid-day gatherings because they tend to unplug from their devices for a while, and laugh and joke.

It's nice that they like each others company so much; that is not always the case with siblings. One thing that helps is they are really not all that similar as people -- they have three completely different approaches to most things.

For instance they almost never order the same meal when we eat out.

Yet they share a value system and they all seem to respect one another. I give them the credit; the parents can't really affect this outcome, it has to come from within them as people.

-30-

Sunday's Sunday

My son Peter and his girlfriend, Claire, on their way to Thailand.

***

It's a three-day weekend, as Monday is President's Day. It's sunny and clear as the worst drought in half a millennium continues here on the coast.

I'm spending the day watching Big Ten basketball, back where it's snowy and cold. Growing up in the Midwest, I used to love these games, no matter who was playing. Just before I got to Michigan, a great basketball player from Chicago showed up. A guy named Cazzie Russell.

He was the best shooter I had ever seen, and off the court, a humble man.

I interviewed him as a young sportswriter, he was invariably polite and soft-spoken.

Ever since then, I have appreciated how sports helps kids not from the elite succeed. I have my own three stellar athletes -- Peter, Aidan, and Julia.

Julia is the only one still competing. More on her after her next game...

-30-