WHERE SALMON COME TO DIE: An Autumn...

WHERE SALMON COME TO DIE: An Autumn on Alaska’s Raincoast by Leon Kolankiewicz (Pruett Publishing: $16.95; 126 pp., illustrated, paperback original). After his college graduation in 1982, Kolankiewicz found a job with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, counting salmon as they swam inland to spawn on Chichagof Island. In an expanded series of journal entries and letters home, he recounts his often bumbling attempts to perform tasks for which he had received only minimal training, jerry-rig inadequate equipment and cope with marauding bears and uncooperative fish. The author’s reflections on his growing appreciation of the forest environment are more interesting and honest than the silly we-rafted-down-Niagara Falls adventure books that burden the “outdoors” shelves of bookstores.