First Sentence

"Before the Endangered Species Act; before shopping centers covered streams with asphalt; before dams and dynamos harnessed the energy of wild rivers; before irrigation sucked rivers dry; before timber harvest robbed rivers of their protective forests; before fishermen's nets swept through the rivers and bays; before humans walked across the Bering Strait and into the Pacific Northwest; before glaciers gouged out Puget Sound; before the Oregon coast migrated away from Idaho; before all this, there were the salmon."