Some time ago, I spent twelve years in Alaska, and my job allowed me to travel over much of that enormous state – including to many villages scattered through the vast wilderness, connected not by roads but by rivers. So when, at the Waco Library, I spied a book about an extraordinary canoe trip across the state, I had to check it out.
Starting at the headwaters of the Yukon River, high in the Canadian Rockies, Kings of the Yukon: One Summer Paddling Across the Far North traces the journey of salmon – specifically king salmon – as they migrate 2,000 miles to the ocean – and later return to their place of origin to spawn and die. Which is a fascinating story itself – but this book is so much more than that.
Author Adam Weymouth first canoed the Yukon during the summer of 2016 and returned for further research in 2017, although he wrote about traveling the river as if it were one trip. Kings of the Yukon was published in 2018.
Weymouth’s writing flows like the river itself, linking science, history, indigenous cultures, modern industry, and our complicated relationship with the natural world.
Of the Yukon he writes, “It is a milky, soupy brown. The silt, rubbed from distant mountains, whispers at the hull, and if you dip your paddle and hold your ear to the shaft you can hear it clearer still, as though the river is deflating.”
The number of King Salmon – Chinook in Canada – is declining – dramatically - and that decline can be traced to advances of the modern world. As Weymouth paddles down the river, he spends time in villages and gets to know families whose lives have been linked to these fish for untold generations. His words paint portraits of these people whose world is being changed by the same forces that are overwhelming the salmon.
Far down the river, Weymouth visits the fish camp of Mary Demientieff, an Athabaskan elder. He writes, “Her sister calls, from Wasilla.
“It’s going to be an early winter,” Mary says. “That’s all right, then. Nothing I can do.”
They were starting to get long drawn-out falls, not like before. These days it’s all messed up.
“Maybe it’s the end,” says her sister.
Mary chuckles. “I don’t know,” she says. “Nobody knows those things. Nobody but God.”
Everything changes, Mary thinks as she hangs up. There used to be a hundred yards of riverbank out the front of the camp, and now it was all caved in, the Yukon coming closer every year. One way or another something would come for her, when it was her time. But maybe not just yet.”
Adam Weymouth won the Sunday Times Peter Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award in 2018 for Kings of the Yukon. The book was Lonely Planet’s Adventure Travel Book of the year in 2019.
Reviewer Harold Johnson writes, “There may be a smoothness to the words, but pay attention: there are deep undercurrents here.”
Kings of the Yukon is available at the Waco McLennan County Library. Check it out – or buy your own copy! I HIGHLY recommend it.
