From the Archives • December 2000

From the Lower Left Corner:

All I want for Christmas is...

by Victoria Stoppiello

The morning of winter solstice arrived with fresh snow on the ground. My husband asked, "Why do people get so excited whenever it snows?" My intuition replied, "Because it's a transformation." It's the time of year we look for magic.

My thoughts turned to Christmas. A while back I heard a radio host reading children's letters to Santa. One writer wanted a bunch of Barbies and a computer. I thought back to my own past Christmas wishes; I wanted a horse at six, requested a miniature refrigerator and range when I was seven, and a bicycle at nine. You'd think I wanted a car at 16, but all I wanted then was to get out of Vernonia!

As an adult, I've been asked what I'd like for Christmas and a few years ago, my wish for a new bathroom sink was fulfilled. This year I've been thinking about Christmas wishes and have come up with a few: I'd like to stop worrying as much as I do. I wish that those I know who are struggling with cancer would fully recover. I wish my older relatives would find peace of mind as they approach the end of life. I wish we'd all get along a little better—a retreaded version of "peace on earth" that applies to the where I live just as well as to the Middle East.

But most of all, I wish the salmon would return. My feelings about this aren't totally rational. I don't fish and I know I can live without eating salmon, but it goes deeper than the material fact of fish coming and going in the rivers. If the salmon runs returned, then I'd know things are going to be all right.

I used to take salmon for granted. We caught them, smoked them, canned them, cooked them, ate them. Carved them, painted them, counted them, waited for them. And now we wait for them some more and the counts aren't very good. I feel myself growing tense, wondering if their numbers are so depressed that they might not make it back. A combination of events could deliver the fatal blow, not just to one run, but to many. How far down can we push them and still have them bounce back? What are we waiting for? Are we really willing to take the chance of losing them forever, like the passenger pigeon, just plain gone, no more, none, not any?

I feel a frightened twitch in my gut about this. Salmon are not just a symbol, not just an artifact from another era. They are an indicator of our own chances. If wild salmon can't make it in this land of the salmon and cedar people, this environment to which they are wonderfully adapted, what are our chances? Do we really believe that we can live beyond nature, beyond the restraints of clean water, clean air washed by forests? Can we live with polluted streams, a landscape of pavement and buildings only? Can you eat electricity?

The other night I asked a few friends the rhetorical question, "How many people are thinking they want the salmon to return?" and the other three said in unison, "Everyone does." But the realist in the group said, "That's not the issue. The problem is everyone wants someone else to make the change, no one wants to stop building, reduce their electricity, stop dredging, stop clearcutting, get the cows out of the streams, stop fishing. We all point our fingers at someone else to change their behavior so the salmon can come back."

That's both a realistic response and a disheartening one. My little efforts are so insignificant compared to the Corps of Engineers blasting and dredging three feet out of a hundred miles of Columbia River. My little house's energy conservation is only a drop saved from the millions of megawatts that get swooshed through the Columbia River's dams. My little voice asking to protect wetlands and streams within the town of Ilwaco is a whisper compared with the boom of "can't stop progress" and "it'll be good for economic development."

But I've got to start somewhere in order to have any peace of mind. I can suggest, I can wish, I can imagine. As the song goes, "you may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. And maybe someday you will join us..."

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