While the population of this world continues to grow, the amount of developed land also steadily increases, resulting in an ever-diminishing lack of truly wild places. Despite this, there are still hidden gems that remain mostly untouched, and I believe that deep down buried in our biology, all of us have the urge and desire to find these places. As a photographer, guide, and fly fisherman, my travels recently led me to one of these last wild places in the United States – Alaska.

Here, just west of Anchorage, a small town called King Salmon sits on the Nanek river southwest of Katmai National Park. King Salmon is one of those towns where you can stand on one side and see the other, and with only one road leading to the only other surrounding town, Naknek, a commercial fishing town, one’s only access to the tundra, rivers, and mountains is through the use of boats or, more commonly, float planes. In this area, the tundra, rivers and volcanic mountains that make up Katmai National Park create a unique environment in which each distinct part interacts with one another.

Katmai National Park was explored by a group of National Geographic explorers in 1917 after the eruption of Novarupta, one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever recorded. While this eruption displaced the native Alutiiq people, what was uncovered was a system of lakes and rivers that only became more fertile, and would soon function as a hub for an abundance of both flora and fauna. Despite the physical and geographic monuments in this special region, the true marvel and all-encompassing driver for every aspect of nature and the economy in this area is the largest migrations our planet has to offer – the salmon run. With around 60 million fish moving from the ocean into a network of different rivers, the salmon run’s amount of biomass is truly staggering.

Salmon are anadromous, a term which describes fish that live most of their life (3-5 years) in the ocean, but migrate back into freshwater environments to reproduce. Salmon will travel upwards of 2,000 miles to return to the exact location they were born. Researchers believe that they use the Earth’s magnetic field and their sense of smell once they reach their river to find their individual birthplaces. After crossing thousands of miles, being beaten and battered along the way, their bodies begin to change completely. Teeth begin to protrude for the defence of their eggs and bright red colours begin to appear for sexual competition along with large humps on the backs of males. Although all five species of salmon experience these changes, the most emblematic salmon species is the sockeye salmon. Starting as a dark blueish-green, sockeye salmon skin transforms into one of nature’s most vivid red hues. When the salmon run begins in mid to late June, the rivers around Katmai National Park are fraught and bursting with sockeye to the point where the crystal-clear waters turn red when viewed from above. It looks as though the arteries of this Alaskan environment are pumping in fresh blood to fuel the entirety of the ecosystem.