What the Salmon in the Creek Below My House When I Was a Kid Taught Me About Fighting Fascism

When I was twelve years old, I had the mother of all teachable moments.

Mar 01, 2025

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

When I was a boy, my family lived in the suburbs, right at the edge of a vast wilderness. I spent so much of my childhood playing in the woods below our house, especially in and around the little stream that wound its way through the forest.

That narrow creek even had a salmon run. Every autumn, these massive silver fish would swim upstream to spawn. Afterward, these glorious creatures would die and lie rotting in the water and on the banks of the stream.

It was just about the most fantastic thing I had ever seen. It was such a weird contrast, these massive fish in that little creek.

I loved those salmon so much.

school of fish underwater — *Photo by Mark Huigen on Unsplash*

But the longer I lived near that creek, the more that wilderness was paved over for more suburbs — and the fewer salmon returned every year to spawn.

When I was in the seventh grade, I did my school “science fair” project on salmon, using the creek below our house as my case study. As part of my research, I had the water quality of the creek tested.

Unfortunately, the results came back very poor. According to the report, the quality was not good enough to support salmon: too much run-off from the surrounding roads, probably, which had affected the oxygen in the water.

three clear beakers placed on tabletop — *Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash*

I wrote all this up as part of my project. But I was more concerned about the salmon than I was about winning a ribbon, so I also wrote a pointed letter to the city mayor, demanding that something be done to save the salmon.

A week or so later, my science teacher pulled me out of class into the hallway, very upset. “Did you write to the mayor about your science fair project?” he demanded.

I admitted that I had, and I started to explain why when my teacher interrupted me. “Well, I just got off the phone with the mayor’s office, and they’re very upset with you!”

“But in my project, I tested the water quality in the stream, and it’s—”

“Yes, I know your report! You tested the water in one place at one time of year! Do you really think the city doesn’t closely monitor the water in that stream? The mayor’s office assures me that everything is fine. Did you write to anyone else?”

“Well, I was going to write a letter to the editor of the newspa—”

“Don’t you dare!” he said. “Brent, I don’t understand how you could be so careless! You didn’t learn the most important lesson of this science fair, which is that science is about caution — about being thoughtful. Anyway, this was just a school project, and you’re just a kid!”

“I am so sorry!” I said to my teacher.

My teacher was right — I was just a kid. I’d never felt so mortified. The adults knew much better than I did — obviously. At least it was a relief to find out that the water in the stream was fine, that the salmon were going to be okay. But how could I have been so stupid?

Needless to say, I didn’t win a ribbon in that year’s science fair.

But the following year, only two salmon came back to that little creek below our house. And the year after that, there were none. I never saw any of those beautiful silver salmon ever again.

man wearing knit cap on grey background — Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

And I experienced the mother of all teachable moments — even if a big part of what I learned is that you can’t necessarily trust your teacher.

Here are some of the many other things I learned:

Adults really don’t know everything.
Sometimes people will lie to protect their own asses — even governments.
Listen to your gut — it’s an incredibly valuable tool.
In science and life, logic and passion are both really important.

I also felt really guilty. I loved those salmon so much, and I had seen what was happening to them. I had known the truth. But I had — so stupidly! so foolishly! — let myself be intimidated into silence.

Sure, I was just a naive kid, but that hadn’t mattered to those salmon. I’d let them down, and they’d paid the ultimate price.

This failure of mine haunted me.

Maybe it’s why I soon turned to a life of activism. At one point, I helped found what turned out to be the world’s third gay-straight youth alliance. A few years later, I helped found a local AIDS organization.

And often, I even felt like I’d made a bit of a difference to the world, making it a slightly better place.

But the story of those salmon isn’t over yet.

Years later, my husband Michael and I returned to my hometown — in part, to help my father with my mother, who had developed Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. One afternoon, I saw a flyer for a local group trying to restore the salmon run in that little creek below my parents’ house.

I couldn’t wait to join.

green trees beside body of water — *Photo by Karim Sakhibgareev on Unsplash*

It turned out to be a very small group — just three of us showing up consistently. And after we did our water quality studies, we learned the creek still couldn’t sustain a run of coho salmon, which is what the salmon of my youth had been. Coho spend the first year of their lives in the streams where they’re born.

But that creek could possibly support a run of a different species, chum salmon, which hatch and immediately swim for the ocean. And, in fact, the stream had also once been home to a run of these salmon too.

And so, working with biologists and the local government, we did a series of stream clean-ups. We hacked out invasive species and planted native vegetation. And we eventually reintroduced a run of chum salmon to that little creek.

A few years later, I watched the first of the adult salmon return from the run we had introduced. Now they come back every December.

I said before I’ve been doing activism my whole life, and it’s often been very satisfying, especially whenever I helped specific people solve specific problems.

But nothing has ever made me feel as empowered as reintroducing that run of salmon to that little stream.

Yes, it was partly the connection I felt to those fish — relieving some of the guilt I felt for having let them down before.

But another part of it was the specific, manageable nature of the project: there was a problem, and we solved it. We made the problem…stop being a problem!

And as an added bonus, it was very obviously true that if the three of us hadn’t done it, no one else would’ve.

I’ve spent my whole life thinking about the salmon in the creek below my house as a kid, but I’ve been thinking about them even more since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

If you think what Trump and his supporters are doing to America right now is normal, or if you even approve, my message here isn’t for you.

But I’m shocked and horrified by the stupidity, the cruelty, the lies, and the lawlessness. It seems clear that Trump and Elon Musk are embarking on a project to transform the United States of America into an anti-democratic, authoritarian-style government modeled after Viktor Orbán’s “soft-fascism” in Hungary.

And it’s all very overwhelming — which is, of course, precisely the point: to make people feel powerless, like the wholesale transformation of our system of government and the complete upending of the post-war world order is… inevitable.

sea waves — *Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash*

Brent and Michael Are Going Places

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