A chef, a creek, and a salmon revival
In 22 years of looking for them, Holly Smith had seen only one salmon attempting the upstream journey to spawn in Juanita Creek.
“Actually, my son saw one and I saw one,” she says. “Two fish in 22 years. I am not lying.”
Not seeing salmon spawning here was hardly a shock. Like the rest of this region, the city of Kirkland, a bedroom community across Lake Washington from Seattle, has seen more than its share of housing developments, condominium towers, office parks, and strip malls, generally to the incremental degradation of streams like Juanita Creek.
Environmentalists, the fishing industry, and Pacific Northwest tribes have warned of dwindling salmon fisheries for years. But Ms. Smith was about to
