It feels like we’ve been filming nothing but people lately. The high school trail crew working on the terrible trail we hiked in on, the meeting at Stonebreaker Ranch, pilots flying in to Chamberlain airstrip and their ideas on wilderness… So when we hiked up the valley to Red Top Meadows, about 7 miles from Chamberlain airstrip, we were excited to get back to the wildlife aspect. There is a large area filled with mineral licks and wallows, where we had seen lots of wolf sign on our way in, and which naturally attracts wildlife anyway.
We found a great camp spot on a bluff over looking a secret meadow, beautiful and unusually lush for the otherwise burned valley. Chamberlain Creek meanders in lazy S’s under the bluff where we set up our tent, and large salmon splash regularly in the riffles, at the height of their spawning. We had no idea there were so many fish that came up this creek, and were pleasantly surprised to find them not skittish to filming. The first night we arrived, I walked down to the creek to filter water. Squatting on a gravel bar, I looked out into the clear water and suddenly saw, less than four feet away, a three foot long dark red fish, wagging gracefully in the current. A salmon, a little scuffed and travel weary, but there non-the-less, over 900 miles from the ocean where its journey had begun. If only they could tell stories…
The salmon kind of remind me of river monsters, or eels on a very elegant and un-eely kind of way. Something about their dark glistening backs, arched as they surge up a riffle, or arced in a sliding turn to slip back downstream. They are like one big muscle with a few fins attached here and there.
The first day after we arrived at Red Top Meadows, we had a sunny day, with good salmon filming, washing cloths, swimming in the creek, and basking on the sandy bars while our laundry dried. The day ended with a beautiful sunset over the meadow full of grasses, turning burgundy at their tops (Red Top Meadow?). But that was the last we saw of the sun. The next morning the light failed early as storm clouds marched in. Isaac spent some time getting grumpy in the tent trying to program our radios (monumental task), and I took a walk down the trail after the first rainstorm had passed, just looking for berries and stretching my legs.
Around midday we filmed some more salmon, and also a bear who happened along the bank, attracted by the splashing of the fish. I had seen it coming, and hissed to Isaac who was focused on the salmon “bear!”. He swung the camera around we both sat transfixed, hoping with all our might that it would go down the bank and begin fishing for salmon, which would have been a great filming opportunity. Instead it kept ambling straight towards us, focused intently on the fish. As it neared and neared and neared, I suddenly realized that Isaac would much rather film the bear from ten feet away, than worry about his wife, over which the bear would stumble before it got to the camera and Isaac. When it was about 20 feet away, I could hold it in not longer and hissed again, “are we ok?!”
At which point, of course, the bear saw us and galloped away. Then I felt silly, of course we were ok, the bear was interested in the fish, and afraid of us. It was just an instinct that welled up, as happens sometimes with animals I am not familiar with.
Just in the few days we watched the salmon, I noticed a huge change in the fish. They slowly lost their distinctive markings and bright colors. They became marred by blotches and nicks all over their fins. There is a creeping black shadow on the females, that began on their bellies and is creeping up the sides of their long bodies, and white fleshy gashes all over the males from scraping on rocks and increasingly competitive battles with each other. Their bodies are literally rotting away. It is such a fascinating life. They are born in fresh water, live their lives in salt water in the ocean, and then return one last time to fresh water to spawn. But the second they swim into the fresh water of rivers and streams, their bodies begin to slowly decompose. By the time they reach their birth streams, they spawn and then die a few days later. It’s amazing to watch.
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