For a long time I would take the time to go watch the salmon. At first I would just go to the observation window at the locks because I just didn't know where else to go. Later I would watch them come back to a small stream they left from. They would arrive and and circle in front of the mouth of the stream. Round and round for days. Once I put on a snorkel and went out to try and swim with them but all I could do was wait for them to come around and file past. They seemed unconcerned to see me, intent as they were on whatever the forces that moved them.
Sometimes it rained, but more often not. As the days passed the salmon would circle closer and closer to the mouth of the stream. A big gravid female would lead them. She would bring them in close and I would think , well this is it, but she would veer away almost as if undecided at the last instant. Around and around they would come. By now people are coming to fish, throwing treble hooks over the school and reefing it back to snag one. I fished for awhile but in the end I just felt foolish and wrong. The fish never wavered, they would plow by driven by a force I could only accept. The lead female would come around to the mouth of the stream with her head up, almost out of the water. Her mouth would be open as she gulped in the fresh water, buoyant on top of the salt. Her head would sweep back and forth searching for whatever was the key to the next step. And one day all of it made sense and she would charge upstream. Their tails just pounding the water with a force that always surprised me. I wondered if it wasn't a signal to the rest of the fish or if their sedate pace in the Sound wasn't just conserving energy for this push. Over the next couple of weeks they would keep coming until this portion of their cycle was complete.
In late October I make the time to go to Tumwater Canyon on the other side of the mountains. The salmon there have arrived by a more arduous route. They have negotiated the Columbia and the Wenatchee and pushed up the east side of the Cascades. By October there isn't much left. The cycle is complete. The last of the males are still heading upstream. I don't think they eat. They are just living on what's left of their own tissue, though still driven by the force that brought them back here. It's cold and wet and the traffic on the road roars by without a second glance. The males with their rotting flesh and hooked jaws push upstream, only to slowly drift back. I used to think that I'd see one give up, but they never do. Maybe only in the night or when the light first hits the water. You can see they are exhausted, finished, and not about to quit. I take something away from that too.
How do you mess up something like a salmon run? It takes some effort. Look at how the Native Culture of the Northwest lived. Their year was spent doing artwork while waiting for the fish to come back. The connection between the fish and the culture was never out of their minds. Nature was linked with survival. I wonder if modern civilized man just destroyed nature so not to have to think of that. This endless stacking up of goods and money might just be some primitive hording instinct. How much fear is really out there?
I'm thinking about this as I head out the door. I'm going to drive around. Screw the price of gas, or what projects I have going on, or the deadlines I think I have to meet. I want to head up some creek, circle around the mountains. I want to see something differently. Experience a moment. I'll do what I do and it will motivate me somehow. On my return I will channel that energy into shaping something that has meaning to me and maybe someone else looking at it. I'm not going to some numbing slave job that serves every interest but mine. I'll pay for that I guess. My life has become economically superficial, a cultural afterthought, like the salmon.
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