Creatures of the Kingdom: Stories of Animals and Nature

by James A. Michener

  A notable feature of Taku was the family of powerful glaciers that pushed their snouts right to the water’s edge, where from time to time they calved off huge icebergs that came thundering into the cold waters with echoes reverberating in the hills and mountains. It was a wild, lonely, majestic body of narrow water, and it drained a vast area reaching into Canada almost to the lakes that the Chilkoot miners traversed in 1897 and ’98. To travel upstream in the Taku was to probe into the heart of the continent, with the visible glaciers edging down from much more extensive fields inland, where the ice cover had existed for thousands upon thousands of years.

  Taku Inlet ran mainly north and south, with the glaciers crawling down to the western shore, but on the eastern bank, directly opposite the snout of a beautiful emerald glacier, a small but lively river with many waterfalls debouched, and nine miles up its course a lake of heavenly grace opened up, not large in comparison with many of Alaska’s lakes, but incomparable, with its ring of six, or from some vantage points, seven mountains that formed a near-circle to protect it.

  This remote spot, which not many visitors, or natives either, ever saw, had been named Lake Pleiades by the Russian explorer Arkady Voronov. As his journal explained:

  On this day we camped opposite the beautiful green glacier which noses into the inlet on the west. A river scintillating in the sunlight attracted my attention, and with two sailors from the Romanov, I explored it for a distance of nine miles. It would be quite unnavigable for even a canoe, because it came tumbling down over rocks, even forming at times small waterfalls eight and ten feet high.

  Since it was obvious to us that we were not going to find a better waterway on this course, and since grizzly bears started at us twice, to be deflected by shots over their heads, we had decided to return to our ship with nothing but a fine walk for our labors when one of the sailors, who was breaking the path upstream, shouted back: ‘Captain Voronov! Hurry! Something remarkable!’

  When we overtook him we saw that his cry was not misleading, for ahead of us, rimmed by six beautiful mountains, lay one of the clearest small lakes I have ever seen. It lay at an elevation, I should guess from the nature of our climb, of about nine hundred feet, not much higher, and it was marred by nothing. Only the bears and whatever fish were in the lake inhabited this magnificent refuge, and we decided on the moment, all three of us, to camp here for the night, for we were loath to depart from such an idyllic place.

  I therefore asked each of the men to volunteer for a hurried trip back to the Romanov to fetch tents and to bring with him one or two other sailors who might like to share the experience with us, and the man who stepped forward said: ‘Captain, with so many bears, I think he should come too,’ indicating his partner. ‘And he better bring his gun.’ I consented, for I realized that I, with my own gun, could protect myself in a settled spot, while they, being on the move, might attract more attention from the bears.

  Off they went, and I was left alone in this place of rare beauty. But I did not stay in one place, as planned, because I was lured by the constantly changing attitude of the six mountains which stood guard, and when I had moved some distance to the east, I saw to my surprise that there were not six mountains but seven, and in that moment I determined the name of this lake, Pleiades, because we all know that this little constellation has seven stars, but without a telescope we can see only six. As mythology teaches, the visible six sisters each married gods, but Merope, the hidden seventh, fell in love with a mortal, and thus hides her face in shame.

  Lake Pleiades it became, and on three subsequent visits to this eastern area I camped there. It remains the happiest memory of my duty in Alaska, and if, in future generations, some descendant of mine elects to return to these Russian lands, I hope he or she will read these notes and seek out this jewel of a lake.

  * * *

  In September 1900 one hundred million minute eggs of the sockeye salmon were deposited in little streams feeding into that lake. They were delivered by female salmon in lots of four thousand each, and we shall follow the adventures of one such lot, and one salmon within that lot.

  The sockeye, one of five distinct types of salmon populating Alaskan waters, had been named by a German naturalist serving Vitus Bering. Using the proper Latin name for salmon plus a native word, he called it Oncorhynchus nerka, and the solitary egg of that hundred million whose progress we shall watch will bear that name.

  The egg that when fertilized by milt, or sperm, would become Nerka was placed by its mother in a carefully prepared redd, or nest, in the gravelly bottom of a little stream near the lake and left there without further care for six months. It was abandoned not because its parents were negligent but because they were fated to die soon after depositing and fertilizing the eggs that perpetuated their kind.

  The site chosen for Nerka’s redd had to fulfill several requirements. It had to be close to the lake in which the growing salmon would live for three years. The stream chosen must have a gravel bottom so that the eggs could be securely hidden; it must provide a good supply of other gravel that could be thrown over the redd to hide the incubating eggs; and most curious of all, it had to have a constant supply of fresh water welling up from below at an unwavering temperature of about 47 degrees Fahrenheit and with a supersupply of oxygen.

  It so happened that the area surrounding Lake Pleiades had varied radically during the past hundred thousand years, for when the Bering land bridge was open, the ocean level had dropped, taking the lake’s level down with it, and as the different levels of the lake fluctuated, so did its shoreline. This meant that various benches had been established at various times, and Nerka’s mother had chosen a submerged bench that through the generations had accumulated much gravel of a size that salmon preferred.

  But how was the constant supply of upwelling water at a reliable temperature delivered? Just as some ancient river had existed, so another subterranean river, emerging from deep in the roots of the surrounding mountains, surged up through the gravel of that sunken bench, providing the rich supply of oxygen and constant temperature that kept both the lake and its salmon vital.

  So for six months, his parents long dead, Nerka in his minute egg nestled beneath the gravel while from below flowed the life-giving water. It was one of the most precise operations of nature—perfect flow of water, perfect temperature, perfect hiding place, perfect beginning for one of the most extraordinary life histories in the animal kingdom. And one final attribute of Lake Pleiades could be considered the most remarkable of all: the rocks that lined the lake and the waters that flowed into it from the submerged rivulets carried minute traces—perhaps one in a billion parts—of one mineral or another, with the result that Lake Pleiades had a kind of lacustrine fingerprint that would differentiate it from any other lake or river in the entire world.

  Any salmon born, as Nerka would soon be, in Lake Pleiades would bear with him always the unique imprint of this lake. Was this memory carried in his bloodstream, or in his brain, or in his olfactory system, or perhaps in a group of these attributes in conjunction with the phases of the moon or the turning of the earth? No one knew. One could only guess, but that Nerka and Lake Pleiades on the western shore of Alaska were indissolubly linked, no one could deny.

  Still only a minute egg, he nestled in the gravel as subterranean waters welled up through the bench to sustain him, and each week he grew closer to birth. In January 1901, deep under the thick ice that pressed down upon the tributary system, the egg that would become Nerka the salmon, along with the other four thousand fertilized eggs of his group, underwent a dramatic change. His egg, a brilliant orange color, showed through the skin an eye with a bright rim and an intensely black center. Unquestionably it was an eye, and it bespoke the emerging life within the egg. But the natural attrition that decimated these minute creatures was savage. Of the original four thousand, only six hundred survived the freezing gravel, the diseases and the predation by larger fish.

  In late February of that year
these six hundred eggs of Nerka’s group began to undergo a series of miraculous changes, at the conclusion of which they would become full-fledged salmon. The embryo Nerka slowly absorbed the nutrients from the yolk sac, and as the interchange occurred, he grew and developed swimming motions. Now he obtained the first of a series of names, each marking a major step in his growth. He was an alevin.

  When his yolk was completely absorbed, the creature was still not a proper fish, only a minute translucent wand with enormous black eyes and, fastened to his belly, a huge sac of liquid nutrient on which he must live for the next crucial weeks. He was an ugly, misshapen, squirming thing, and any passing predator could gulp down hundreds like him at a time. But he was a potential fish with a monstrously long head, functioning eyes and a trailing translucent tail. Rapidly in the constantly moving waters of his stream he began to consume plankton, and with the growth that this produced, his protruding sac was gradually resorbed until the creature was transformed into a self-sufficient baby fishling.

  At this point Nerka left his natal stream and moved the short distance into the lake, where he was properly called a fry, and in this condition he showed every characteristic, except size, of a normal freshwater fish. He would breathe like one through his gills; he would eat like one; he would learn to swim swiftly to dodge larger predators; and it would seem to any observer that he was well adapted to spend the rest of his life in this lake. In those first years it would have seemed preposterous to think that one day, still to be determined by his rate of growth and maturation, he would be able to convert his entire life processes so radically that he would be completely adapted to salt water.

  Ignorant of his strange destiny, Nerka spent the next two years adjusting to life within the lake, which presented two contradictory aspect On the one hand it was a savage home where salmon fry were destroyed at appalling rates. Larger fish hungered for him. Birds sought him out, especially the merganser ducks that abounded on the lake, but also kingfishers and stiltlike birds with long legs and even longer beaks that could dart through the water with incredible accuracy to snap up a tasty meal of salmon. It seemed as if everything in the lake lived on fry, and half of Nerka’s fellow survivors vanished into gullets before the end of the first year.

  But the lake was also a nurturing mother that provided young fry with a multitude of dark places in which to hide during daylight hours and a jungle of underwater grasses in which they could lose themselves if light, dancing off their shimmering skin, betrayed their presence to the larger fish. Nerka learned to move only in the darkest nights and to avoid those places where these fish liked to feed, and since in these two years he was not even three inches long, and most things that swam were larger and more powerful than he, it was only by exercising these precautions that he managed to survive.

  He was now a fingerling, a most appropriate name, since he was about the size of a woman’s little finger, and as his appetite increased, the comforting lake provided him with nutritious insect larvae and various kinds of plankton. As he grew older he fed upon the myriad tiny fishes that flashed about, but his main delight was twisting upward, head out of water, to snare some unsuspecting insect.

  Nerka, now three years old, had settled into a routine in freshwater Lake Pleiades that looked as if it would continue throughout his lifetime. But one morning, after a week of agitation, he sprang into unprecedented action, as if a bell had summoned him and all the sockeye of his generation to the performance of some grand, significant task.

  And then, for reasons he could not identify, his nerves jangled as if an electric shock had coursed through his body, leaving him agitated and restless. Driven by impulses he did not understand, he found himself repelled by the once-comforting freshwater of his natal lake and for some days he thrashed about. Suddenly one night, Nerka, followed by thousands of his generation, began to swim toward the exit of the lake and plunged into the rushing waters of the Pleiades River. But even as he departed, he had a premonition that he must one day, in years far distant, return to this congenial water in which he had been bred. He was now a smolt, on the verge of becoming a mature salmon. His skin had assumed the silvery sheen of an adult, and although he was still but a few inches long, he looked like a salmon.

  With powerful strokes of his growing tail he sped down the Pleiades, and when he was confronted by rapids tumbling over exposed rocks he knew instinctively the safest way to descend, but when waterfalls of more ominous height threatened his progress he hesitated, judged alternatives, then sprang into vigorous activity, leaping almost joyously into the spray, thrashing his way down, and landing with a thump at the bottom, where he rested for a moment before resuming his journey.

  Did he, through some complex biological mechanism, record these waterfalls as he descended them, storing knowledge against that fateful day, two years hence, when he would be impelled to climb them in the opposite direction in order to enable some equally determined female sockeye to spawn? His return trip would be one of the most remarkable feats in the animal world.

  But now as he approached the lower reaches of the river he faced a major peril, because at a relatively inconsequential waterfall, which he normally could have handled with ease, he was either so tired or so careless that he allowed himself to be thrown against a rock protruding from the downward current; the result was that he landed with an awkward splash at the foot of the falls, where, awaiting just such mishaps, a group of voracious Dolly Varden trout, each bigger than the salmon smolts, prowled the waters. With swift, darting motions the trout leaped at the stunned smolts, devouring them in startling numbers, and it seemed likely that Nerka, totally disoriented by slamming against the rock, would be an easy prey and disappear before he ever reached the salt water that was luring him.

  But he had already proved himself to be a determined fish, and now he instinctively dodged the first attack of the trout, then dropped into protective weeds from which the larger fish could not dislodge him, and in this manner evaded the hungry attacks of the trout.

  Of the four thousand salmon born in Nerka’s group in Lake Pleiades in 1901, how many now survived? That is, how many swam down the Pleiades River to fulfill their destiny in the ocean? The constant depletion had been so frightful and so constant that 3,968 had perished, leaving only thirty-two alive and ready for the adventure in the ocean. But upon those pitiful few the great salmon industry of Alaska would be built, and it would be Nerka and the other fighting, self-protective fish like him who would keep canneries like the Totem Cannery on Taku Inlet so richly profitable.

  At last, one morning, Nerka, having fended off long-legged herons and diving mergansers, approached the most critical moment of his life so far: this freshwater fish was about to plunge into the briny waters of the sea, not inch by inch or slowly over a period of weeks, but with one sweep of his tail and the activation of his fins. True, the change from lake to seawater had been occurring gradually, but even so, the leap to all seawater was momentous.

  When he entered the new medium it was an almost lethal shock. For several days he found himself reeling, recoiling from the salt, and in this virtually comatose condition he faced a terrible danger. An immense flock of voracious white gulls and black ravens hovered low in a sullen sky, eager to dive down and catch the floundering smolts in their beaks and carry them aloft for feeding. The devastation wreaked by these screaming scavengers was awesome: thousands of smolts perished in their sharp claws, and those that miraculously survived did so only by pure luck.

  Nerka, slow to adjust to the salt water, was especially vulnerable, because from time to time he drifted listlessly on his side, an easy target for the diving birds. But sheer chance saved him, and after one near miss he revived enough to send himself down deep toward the darkness he loved, and there, away from the predators, he worked his gills, forcing the unfamiliar seawater through his system.

  Most of that summer Nerka and his fellows lingered in Taku Inlet, gorging themselves on the rich plankton blooms and adjusting
to the salt water. They began to grow. Their senses quickened. Surprisingly, they were no longer afraid to battle larger fish. They were now full-fledged salmon, and gradually they worked their way toward the mouth of the inlet as they began to hunger for the squid, shrimp and small fish that flourished there. And as they matured they felt an urge to move out into the open ocean to new adventures in its swirling waters.

  Of his thirty-one companions who made it to the mouth of Taku Inlet, about half perished before they reached the ocean, but Nerka survived, and he swam forward eagerly, scraping past the protruding rock of the Walrus, leaving Taku Inlet, and heading westward to the Pacific.

  A gyre is a massive body of seawater which retains its own peculiar characteristics and circular motion, even though it is an integral part of the great ocean that surrounds it. The name comes from the same root as ‘gyrate’ and ‘gyroscope’ and obviously pertains to the circular or spiral motion of the water. How a gyre is able to maintain its identity within the bosom of a tumultuous ocean poses an interesting problem whose unraveling carries one back to the beginnings of the universe. In our day the great Japan Current sweeps its warm waters from Japan across the northern reaches of the Pacific to the coasts of Alaska, Canada and Oregon, modifying those climates and bringing much rain. But this and all other ocean currents have been set in motion by planetary winds created by the differential heating of various latitudinal belts, and this is caused by the earth’s spin, which was set in primordial motion when a diffuse nebular cloud coalesced into our solar system. This carries us all the way back to the original Big Bang that started our particular universe on its way.

  A gyre, then, is a big whirl which generates at its edges smaller whirls whose motion increases its viscosity, forming a kind of protective barrier around the parent gyre, which can then maintain its integrity eon after eon. One professor of oceanography, name now unknown, striving to help his students grasp this beautiful concept, offered them a jingle: