The Wild Salmon Odyssey, RELEASED!

It takes a long time to bring a book from idea to a real copy. Seasons of the Grizzly took one year from start to end result with the help of a local designer and printing company. I thought that was a long time.

The Wild Salmon Odyssey has taken almost two years. The actual writing took a few months and the artist, Ted Rechlin, spent a few more months compiling his work. This was the easy part. I spent a year looking for and waiting for replies from Canadian publishers. I finally stumbled upon AEG Publishing and Strategic Book Marketing who took on this project. All correspondence has been via email, so I have run the full emotions from excitement at finding a publisher, to exasperation with my computer and my own lack of computing skills. Whatever happened to good old snail mail? Some parts of the whole process went very well and some seemed to take forever, especially when I had an artist who was getting impatient and I had deadlines I wanted to make. It has been a very steep learning curve, but I am happy to have finally completed the first steps. Now comes marketing, a very simple word with huge possible consequences. Marketing is something not all of us are comfortable with, including me. Self-promotion is not my long suit, so I will once again be depending upon the anonymity of the computer and the Internet. I hope my computer survives without any major dents. I am looking forward to working with Strategic Book Marketing in the next and most important step to the success of our hard work.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ecological tale is a powerful eye-opener for all ages

The Wild Salmon Odyssey follows the life-cycle story of two salmon, Humphrey and Sally, as they migrate their way through danger, swimming thousands of miles to reproduce.

Their epic journey faces man-made and natural threats, while the fish search for food. Join Humphrey and Sally as they grow into strong adult salmon. To spawn, they struggle valiantly over waterfalls, past hungry seals and grizzly bears, so they can return to the river of their birth.

A glorious depiction of wilderness and the battle for survival by its inhabitants, The Wild Salmon Odyssey describes in unique terms how these creatures heed nature's plan.

THE WILD SALMON ODYSSEY (ISBN: 978-1-60911-883-9) will be available on November 22, 2010 for $18.50 USD and can be ordered through the publisher's website:

http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheWildSalmonOdyssey.html or at www.amazon.com or http://search.barnesandnoble.com

Wholesalers please email BookOrder@AEG-Online-Store.com

About the Author: Robert Scriba, a wildlife guide living in Campbell River, British Columbia, finally has the time to appreciate Mother Nature's gifts. "Age and life experiences tend to make me reflect on the damage we have created ourselves and how can we give something back in compensation. I have learned how important salmon are to the environment and have witnessed what happens when they do not return as expected. Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the plight of the wild salmon and how slowly regulators are responding."

A Walk in the Snow

Tuesday I made my weekly trip to the Oyster River hatchery on a chilly Nov. morning. There was no snow on the ground in Campbell River but there was about 3 inches on the ground along the Oyster River. It was too cold to do anything with the fish, so I walked along some of the less used trails around the hatchery site. Icicles hung from some of the overlying branches, built up by the splashing river rapid below. It was a cool, calm, grey morning so I could hear the birds twittering in the underbrush whenever I stopped my crunching feet. On the trail in front of me suddenly appeared a trio of Spotted Towhees, hopping along the old track looking for any seeds that may have dropped overnight. At first I thought they were robins, but they did not have that distinct robin hop, pause for a listen, then hop again. Red breast and grey bodies show similar color patterns, but the Towhee is a bit smaller and has a longer tail. I did not have my binoculars and had only the short lens on my camera, so it took a bit to be sure of what I was seeing.

All along the trail I was using were black bear tracks and side paths. The bears have been regular visitors to the area all summer and fall and have been seen many times by all of us. There is a young bear, quite brave, who scours the side channels for any spawned out and dead salmon. Same with a mother bear with two cubs, not quite so brash, but unafraid of the conservation minded humans. All four of the bears will be hibernating under a tree or a stump somewhere in the nearby area. They are all looking for the final calories that will be stored in fat reserves that will be badly needed through, what promises to be, a cold and long winter. I followed some of the bear trails to see if I could find a den site to no avail. They did use fallen trees as bridges to cross some of the water channels. I am not as agile on these snow covered trees, so did not try to balance my way over the ice covered waters. It reminded me of a time I crossed a dead tree bridge with my own kids when Trina slipped and was left hanging upside down over a water puddle. To her chagrin and embarrassment she has been the brunt of many remarks since then.

As I continued my stroll through the tall trees, I could see signs of other animals that use the area also. Mink tracks, ravens and gulls were scouring the river banks for dead fish as well. Squirrel tracks had pounded a skinny trail between a few coniferous trees and cone caches buried in the ground. Deer, wander aimlessly, snitching the tops off some of the course browse they need to keep up their energy reserves. Deer, I think, also chewed off some of the sweet bark from the base of a maple tree. A tiny, brown winter wren rustled through the lower shrubs and salmon berry bushes with it's identifying tail pointing to the sky. Look, up in the skeleton of the big leaf maple is a pair of eagles, watching over the snow blanketed landscape.

There is a sense of peace in the forest after the first snowfall of the year. The tracks in the snow show that the critters have to make a living outside too. Some of them seem to be making last minute arrangements before their long sleep. As I write this story today, a fresh snow fall is burying old sign but promising a whole new crop of tracks to investigate soon.

(let me know if you think something other than a deer could have chewed this bark off this maple tree.)