Nearly a quarter century ago, an anonymous artist/activist painted a giant crack down the face of the Glines Canyon Dam, one of two dams that blocked the passage of salmon up the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula. 'ELWHA BE FREE" appeared beside it. The crack was, in a way, the opening shot in the great Elwha dam war, a 25-year fight to remove the dams and restore one of the Pacific Northwest's legendary salmon runs. Later this fall, the dams will come down and the Elwha will indeed be free. In the current issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, editor Katherine Koberg gave me some space to chronicle the battle--and to track down and reveal, for the first time, the story of the crack painter. He's an old Earth First! activist named Mikal Jakubal, and I think you'll enjoy meeting him.
About Bruce
- Bruce Barcott, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction, is the author of The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, named one of the best books of 2008 by Library Journal. His previous book, The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier, was a recipient of the Washington State Governor's Award and was recently re-issued in a 10th anniversary edition. Barcott is an environmental journalist whose articles on humans and wildlife appear in Outside Magazine, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. He reviews nonfiction for the New York Times Book Review, Outside, and On Earth magazine. He is currently at work on a narrative history of the battle over salmon and treaty rights in the Pacific Northwest.
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August 09, 2011
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