13 minute read
The Magic Skagit
Story and Photos by Christian Murillo
In the three years I spent photographing and writing my new book, Soul of the Skagit, I listened to countless people affectionately refer to the river as the “Magic Skagit.” Sure, it has a ring to it. But I was relatively new to the Pacific Northwest, and besides the obvious beauty of the Skagit River and the North Cascades, I was curious about what made it so “magical.” Was it the towering mountains? Or the abundant wildlife? Or maybe the brilliantcolored lakes?
It only took one three-day backpacking trip in the North Cascades with my dad to begin to understand what made this gem in a remote corner of the Pacific Northwest so special. Our backpacking adventure was intended to be a scouting trip. I was looking for a new photography project in the Pacific Northwest in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since my parents had just moved to Washington from Miami (where I grew up), I figured throwing my dad in the deep end of the North Cascades wilderness would be therapeutic. Considering it was also his first time camping, we took it relatively easy, something that is surprisingly difficult to do in the rugged terrain of the North Cascades interior.
We packed our bags at Cutthroat Trailhead, just north of the popular and scenic Washington Pass area. As my all-too-stubborn father was going to the bathroom, I snuck a couple of the heavier items from his pack into mine. I wanted to bond with him, not torture him during the 2,600-foot climb to Cutthroat Pass. About two miles in, he started asking me about what potentially dangerous wildlife we might find. At three miles, his nervous questioning continued, probing whether I was sure I locked the car. For my dad, the concept of backpacking must have seemed outlandish. He emigrated from a very modest upbringing in Bolivia then spent his whole life pursuing the comforts of modern-day America. Why on earth would someone intentionally leave their climatecontrolled home and plush memory foam mattress in favor of sleeping on a two-inch thick blow-up sleeping pad while temperatures plunge below freezing?
We moved slowly and steadily up the switchbacks, hiking for about four hours to make the six miles up to camp. With daylight to spare after setting up camp, filtering water, and cooking dinner, my dad anxiously asked, “What do we do now?” I grinned and replied, “Absolutely nothing.” Doing nothing was not normal for my dad. He spent his entire life either working multiple jobs to put himself through school and then selflessly and ceaselessly devoting himself to a quota-driven career in sales. “Doing” was how he learned to exist. For him, there was more comfort in the idea of staying busy rather than taking a step back to soak it all in. When I encouraged him to let his mind simply wander, I began to see the magic of the Skagit firsthand.
It had only taken about six hours from when we left the trailhead until we’d set up our camp, and everything that needed doing for the day was done. As he reclined back into the hammock with golden larch needles gently dropping onto him from their drifting branches, I saw my dad more relaxed than I had ever seen him.
The sheer natural beauty of this wilderness surely had a big part to play in my dad’s transformation. Endless mountain layers pierced the horizon. Luminous larches draped the alpine landscape— lakes and streams nestled in the valleys below. Still, there was something more.
I would like to think that my dad’s repose was also a product of our inherent connection to this landscape, one that humans have fine-tuned over 300,000 years of interacting with nature as a part of our very existence. Even here on this rugged land near Cutthroat Pass, the indigenous ancestors of the Upper Skagit, Chilliwack, Nlaka’pamux, Wenatchi, and Syilx (Okanagan) peoples have called this home for over 20,000 years.
These early occupants of this land thrived not despite the rugged landscape and harsh winters but largely because of those same factors. From the snowy 10,786 summit of Koma Kulshan (Mt. Baker) all the way down to sea level in Skagit Bay, at different times of the year, this watershed is filled with resources that occupy various parts of the landscape.
Snow covers much of the mountainous landscape in the winter, but life in the Skagit continues to thrive; countless salmon surge upstream to spawn in their ancestral waters, each species favoring different tributaries and gravel beds. With the help of the glaciers and shade from the riparian forests, the waters of the Skagit are kept cool enough for salmon to favor this river more than any other that flows into the Puget Sound. In part, the cool water is why the Skagit is the only river in Washington that is still home to all five species of Pacific salmon, plus bull trout and cutthroat trout, which are also in the salmonid family.
Of the salmon in the Skagit, Chinook is king, returning to spawn upriver in the autumn. Not only does their average size of roughly 30 pounds earn their “king salmon” nickname, but so does their cultural and ecological importance. Chinook are the favorite meal for the endangered southern resident orcas, comprising 80% of their diet.
The relationship between the resident orcas and the Chinook is inspiring yet delicate. Both species are listed under the Endangered Species Act, and their populations are intertwined in their success and challenges. With about 60% of the total Puget Sound chinook population coming from the Skagit River alone, there is no place as critical for the future of these iconic species as the Skagit.
As the ecological and man-made stressors that threaten the resident orcas and salmon have increased, Washingtonians have not sat idle on the sidelines. Huge conservation initiatives have been implemented to measure and limit noise pollution, reduce toxic waste in Puget Sound, and open more spawning and rearing habitat for the salmon, among countless other efforts. These are worthy initiatives, and it is refreshing to see so much passion going into recovering these two icons of the natural world. However, I cannot help but feel like sometimes we are trying to place a new roof on a building with an unsettled foundation. While orcas and salmon carry immeasurable cultural value, they depend on entire ecosystems, such as those within the Skagit watershed. Much less revered organisms than orcas and salmon fill many of these ecosystems, but those life forms are just as important.
Interestingly, one of the ecosystems that impacts the success of orcas and salmon the most is the alpine zone, high above the river. Although this seemingly inhospitable terrain of ice and rock feels like an entirely different world than the salmon-filled water thousands of feet below, it is perhaps the driving force that makes the entire watershed function the way it has since the last ice age. While it is easy to assume that this dramatic alpine landscape is too extreme to support any life, perhaps part of the magic of the Skagit is its ability to trick us.
The approximately 370 glaciers in the Skagit are home to a select group of hardy animals. Their specialized characteristics and behaviors are precisely what allows them to thrive here, where few others can. One amazing example of life in these icy expanses is the ice worm. Ice worms might sound like something from a sci-fi movie, but they are a very real and integral part of the alpine ecosystem. Scientists estimate that there are more ice worms on some of the larger glaciers in the Skagit than humans on earth.
This abundance is staggering, because the truth is, we don’t know much about these eyelash-sized creatures. What we do know is that they only live on glaciers. Due to their extremely limited range, they need year-round access to ice in order to survive. Ice worms can survive within the snow and ice because of highly specialized anti-freeze proteins. These proteins allow the worms to carve through the ice during the day and then come to the surface at night to feed on bacteria and algae on the frozen surface.
Ecologists and biologists are currently trying to figure out what value ice worms have to the watershed as a whole. We know there are a lot of them, and we know what they eat and what eats them. But if the glaciers in the North Cascades continue their current recession rate due to climate change, then what would that mean to the ice worms and, hence, the rest of the ecosystem downstream?
Other parts of the watershed can give us clues as to how valuable those ice worms and the glaciers they live in are to all of life further downstream. Despite their reputation for heroic rainfall, the North Cascades receive shockingly little precipitation in the late summer relative to the wet winter months. During these dry spells, the glaciers bestow their reserves of icy, fresh water downstream. This significant contribution of glacial meltwater in August and September happens just in time for the spawning Chinook. The many frigid tributaries keep the main body of water in the Skagit cool throughout its path towards the Salish Sea.
Cold, rushing water is essential for salmon and countless other animals in the Skagit. Salmon won’t spawn in tributaries without enough water to travel upstream, and their eggs won’t hatch if the water is too warm. The glaciers, while critical, are not alone in keeping these ideal conditions intact.
The riparian forests throughout the Skagit also help keep the river cool. Where the trees grow tall, they provide shade, and the dense vegetation of the understory helps control erosion, benefitting the salmon and the entire riverine structure. Salmon reciprocate in this relationship as they swim upstream in their last gasp for life. Shortly after their eggs have been laid and fertilized, the salmon die in the same tributaries in which they were born. Some carcasses wash ashore, while various scavengers, including eagles, carry others into the forest.
Once the salmon flesh is consumed, their skeletal remains are left to decompose on the forest floor. While their sacrifice gives life to their offspring, their post-mortem sacrifice is equally important. The salmon carcasses decompose into the soil with the help of insects, bacteria, and fungi. This process provides the plants with a vital source of a special ocean-derived nitrogen compound, 15N. While all plants need nitrogen to grow, very few plants have the ability to source it from the air, where it is plentiful. They rely on bacteria, and in this case, salmon, to bring nitrogen to their root systems. The trees in the Skagit carry the nitrogen that the salmon bring from faraway oceans into their heartwood, helping them grow taller and stronger.
The Skagit is full of cyclical, intertwined relationships like this. We can see it within specific biomes like the riparian forests or the alpine glaciers. More importantly, we can see it between biomes across different elevations throughout the Skagit. No matter how tight we zoom in or how far we zoom out, interdependencies and a spider web of relationships reveal themselves.
We humans fit somewhere in that spider web, or at least we are intended to. Perhaps that is where the “magic” of the Skagit lies. In those little moments, lying in a swaying hammock, supported by the flexible structure of the golden larches, we reconnect with the wilderness. Maybe sometimes our role in that spider web is to repair some of the broken strands of silk. Other times, perhaps our role is simply to listen and observe, tipping our hats to the sublime balance of all things wild.
The earliest people in the Skagit showed us ways to live that celebrate the wildness of this incredible corner of the Pacific Northwest. Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking the abundance of the Skagit for an inexhaustible well, abusing our status as beneficiaries of the river’s resources. We sought to conquer the watershed’s wildness, moving the earth to tame its natural fluctuations.
Now, as we seek paths toward healing the wounds caused by centuries of extraction and manipulation, knowing which way to turn can be difficult. We are only beginning to understand the complexity of this interwoven network of life. Even armed with the latest science paired with Indigenous records and ways of knowing, we are just beginning to understand this incredible river. Yet, the sooner we reckon with the complexity of the natural systems at hand, the sooner we can develop solutions to ensure a “Magic Skagit” exists for future generations of all living beings.
Watching my father unwind while backpacking was quite a juxtaposition. In moments such as these, life just seems so simple. At the same time, it is the extremely complex relationships in nature that afford us this perspective. My dad was able to make the personal transformation from stressed serial worker to sunshine-soaking backpacker in a matter of hours. His inspiring metamorphosis lasted the rest of the backpacking trip and likely beyond. Not only was this the validation I needed to spend the next three years of my life dedicated to and immersed in the sacred Skagit, but it was proof that we all belong here. An 82-year-old couple camping in a tent just up the ridge from us affirmed this belief, as they appeared to belong in this rugged landscape as much as anyone else we ran into on this trip. Beyond the awareness that despite our diverse backgrounds, the wilderness is our home, I also began my process of learning how the wilderness of the Skagit can be transformative.
Witnessing animal migrations in the Skagit changed me. Listening to glaciers bending and cracking, eventually releasing chunks of ice thousands of feet down the valley, changed me. Being invited to document the fishing culture of the Upper Skagit tribe as members passed the knowledge down to new generations during their sockeye harvest changed me.
In its unrivaled ability to change us, the Skagit is perhaps the most magical place I have ever been. I will always be grateful for what the river gave me in the three years I waded its tributaries, climbed its mountains, and paddled its waters. Yet, if there is one thing I can give back, it is to tell the story of the Skagit River because it so deserves to be heard. Maybe you, too, will one day find yourself immersed in the Skagit, forever changed by its wild waters.
