b'organize the swimmers into a mutual intelligence.In the two decades since 1978, tens of thousands of people in salmon-bearing watersheds in North America have discovered their love for the vanishing stocks. Salmon is regaining its status as the totem creature of the North Pacific Rim. Salmon, who spend most of their lives hidden from us in the vast oceans, return to instruct and feed us. They focus our attention on some of the smaller increments of the natural worldthe streams that run through our rural homes or beneath our urban structuresat the same time as they instruct us regarding the invisible relationship of one locale to another and the life lessons to be learned from other species. Cantankerous Anne Smith, a rancher who had never been shy about sharing her critiques of the Mattole Restoration Councils strategies, grabbed the hand of Rondal Snodgrass of Sanctuary Forest, by this time a high-profile preservationist, who was sitting next to her. Well be on the agenda committee! If the sudden emergence of thesis and antithesis in the newly polarized community had caught me by surprise, it was nothing compared to the startling synthesis that would follow.Watershed councils and alliances have sprouted up as if from seeds lain dormant for centuries waiting for the right conditions of soil and climate to germinate. . .Journalist Phillip Johnson states, There is no name for an economy that has the watershed as a basic unit; contemplating that question might open up a whole new avenue of thought. There is something pleasing about reel lawn mowers and salmon as reminders. Maybe its time for them to replace E.F. Schumacher and 133'