But there are still a few tiny little additions and changes, and in the absence of the bigger ones, they stand out more than usual. A little later in the amidah we add the three u'v chen's, which talks again about the divine malchuyot, the aspect of God which is somehow, in the eyes of the tradition, like a king. I'm always looking for a way to understand this king stuff, and this year I found a hint, of all places, in Totem Salmon , a beautiful book written by Freeman House, who lives along the Mattole River in Humboldt County. Totem Salmon is all about a project which a bunch of locals did for well over a decade, trying to restore wild salmon to the Mattole. The loss of a cover of trees causes the water to heat up and kills spawning salmon.
Trashed channels are often a by product of logging.
The Mattole group had government maps and photos made after a flood year, which showed huge trashed channels, some a mile long and as much as a hundred yards wide. It was now four relatively dry years later, and the local folks were going out to document the destruction for themselves. They hiked down the waterways, maps in hand, expecting to find these enormous areas with eroded banks and sun baking the water. To their astonishment these huge stripped areas could not be found. The surveyers wondered if they were lost, if their compasses had all failed simultaneously.