Outsiders or newcomers to Washington may think that Microsoft, or Boeing, if they haven’t read of recent defections, is the King of the Northwest.

But anyone over the age of fifty who was born and raised in Western Washington will know that Salmon is the Once and Only King. There is no way to have been raised in this state and missed seeing and being inspired by the magnificent salmon runs that have historically shaped the Pacific Northwest and the cultures that have thrived here.

Richard Hugo, born in White Center, just as I was, offers poems that celebrate this event and others that mourn its passing as industry, aided and abetted by government neglect, have decimated these magnificent runs.

“Skykomish River Running,” though it focuses somewhat on the steelhead thriving on the salmon runs, beautifully captures the feelings one has when observing a salmon run:

Aware that summer baked the water clear,
today I came to see a fleet of trout.
But as I wade the salmon limp away,
their dorsal fins like gravestones in the air,
on their sides the red that kills the leaves.
Only sun can beat a stream this thin.
The river Sky is humming in my ear.

Where this river empties in the sea,
trout are waiting for September rain
to sting their thirst alive. If they speed
upstream behind the kings and eat the eggs
the silvers lay, I’ll pound the drum for rain.
But sunlight drums, the river is the same,
running like old water in my ear.

I will cultivate the trout, teach their fins
to wave in water like the legs of girls
tormented black in pools. I will swim a
week to be a witness to the spawning,
be a trout, eat the eggs of salmon—
anything to live until the trout and rain
are running in the river in my ear.

The river Sky is running in my hair.
I am floating past the troutless pools
learning water is the easy way to go.
I will reach the sea before December
when the Sky is turning gray and wild
and rolling heavy from the east to say
late autumn was an Oriental child.

The narrator begins by simply wading out into the middle of a salmon migration, accurately observing the “dorsal fins like gravestones in the air” and the bright autumn-like colors of the dying fish.

But in the midst of this sacrificial and holy grounds, the narrator suddenly feels“the river Sky” humming in his ear, as he becomes one with the river and identifies with the Indians who gave this river its name, SKYkomish, saying he’ll “pound the drum for rain.” He continues to transform, saying I will “be a trout,” “swim a/ week to be a witness to the spawning,” and, in the last stanza, “floating past the troutless pools/learning water is the easy way to go.”

I, too, am of these salmon, nourished of their flesh before I was flesh. I, too, struggled with them, brothers, nearly as big as myself, to discover through the struggle who I was and who I was to become. I, too, survived the winter to be reborn in spring by feasting on their flesh.

And I, like Hugo, discovered my common heritage with the American natives who celebrated the salmon’s spirit long before my ancestors came to these shores. I continually try to reinforce that shared heritage by attempting to ensure the salmon’s continued existence despite the many obstacles they face.