Salmon festival is a learning experience

For 19 years now, Coleman National Fish Hatchery personnel have invited members of the public out to see what a working hatchery does during the production season.

A day-long festival, "Return of the Salmon," draws nearly 10,000 to the hatchery grounds, spillways, fish ladders, processing facility, incubators and feeding ponds. The festival was celebrated Saturday, Oct. 17.

Starting when my two children, Timothy and Kristina, were still in grade school, I've enjoyed the unique family outing that a visit to the hatchery provides.

Take one large dollop of education - provided in large part by the numerous wildlife groups that set up booths on the hatchery grounds - and add in some aspects of an outdoors trade show, food vendors of many different types, arts and crafts booths and a large Native American presence with traditional dancing, cedar bark tipi and smoking salmon fillets the old-fashioned way on wooden stakes tilted over an open fire pit, the outing never disappoints and always finds a way to entertain people of all ages.

Last weekend I chatted briefly with a family from Sacramento who all attended the festival for the first time. They had driven up to Anderson to watch the auto races - one of their teenage sons is a competitor - and decided to take in the salmon festival during their off hours.

The weather was cooperative, starting out with a bit of cool overcast that burned off quickly as the sun climbed overhead. By noon, I was wishing I had put on some sunscreen and very thankful that I had remembered my sunglasses, even though I mostly had to carry around my jacket as it was just too warm to wear it.

I watched several youngsters swing croquet mallets at colored balls nearly hidden in the grassy lawn at a new event called Life Cycle Croquet. As the youths progressed through the course, they encountered some of the same obstacles that small salmonids must face on their long swim to the ocean.I was impressed with the display and wished fervently that the knowledge would be absorbed into the brains of those young children.

Over in the processing sheds, the stoccato "thunk" of wooden mallet striking fish skulls brought home the final chapter of the salmon story in a most chilling fashion.

But that is the most efficient way to harvest the 12 million fertilized salmon eggs needed to start a new generation.

That is why I chose to end my stay at the hatchery with a relaxed walk through the incubator rooms where fertilized eggs await the miracle of birth and another cycle.

Like the salmon, I intend to return next year.