The Foreword
[Threshold: The Sorting Protocol]There is a jar on the bench. It contains three years of detritus, organisms, and industrial grit collected from the the watershed of the Little Salmon River. It is a sub-sample of a life lived in the fourth quarter.
In benthic taxonomy, you don't look at the whole river at once. You sort the grid. You identify the specimens one by one to understand the health of the system. This ledger is that process. It is an honest accounting of the material debt we owe this land and the biological interest it has paid back in trout, sponges, and white pine.
I am emptying the jar now because a disruption is nearing—a mandatory hiatus from the field. Before the desk is cleared, the counts must be verified. The following chapters represent the representatives of the sample. Good and bad, they are the evidence of the audit.