The Way of the Salmon

 The Salmon run here in November, so my daughter and I have started making an annual pilgrimage out to Kennedy Creek to see the Chum run on her birthday.  After years of seeing Salmon only in the artificial concrete steps of the Ballard Locks, it is wonderful to see them in the actual waters they spawn in. For those of you who have never seen them in their natural environment I have posted a brief video below.

I have always been in awe of Salmon.  At the Ballard locks, I would watch these foot to two-foot- long huge fish swimming against the strong current, gathering up the strength to jump up a yard or so to the next "step" and then go through this all again at least 6 times.  I will never forget the one I saw once that bore 4 long bear claw scratches along its side but still had narrowly escaped to make this difficult journey.  In the creek, it is less arduous, but still they are swimming against the tide.  The docents tell me they stop eating when they leave salt water, and so they are actually fasting while doing all this strenuous work!   And of course, as we all know - they are not struggling to get to some cushy vacation spot.  They are struggling to get to ideal breeding grounds, breed and then literally die.  Deep in their DNA is the knowledge to return to a place they have not been for two years - a place they were born but spent no real time.  I am awe struck that the Elwha dam blocked the return of Salmon to that river for 100 years, and the year after it came down Salmon returned to it!  How did they know to come back? Watching Salmon swim against the tide up a stream is watching the inborn drive of life for life's sake.

We humans also propagate our species - but we have the joy of spending 18 years or more enjoying them before they leave our nests.  Salmon fry are born after their parents are both dead.  The instinct the mother has to build the safest nest location she can, is the only nurturing she can/will do.  The odds are so heavily stacked against them it is a miracle there have ever been salmon, let alone now as we create ecological destruction for their habitat.  The docent tells us a mother lays 300,000 eggs (in her one and only shot at reproduction).  A much smaller number are fertilized, hatch and make it out to the ocean.  Many adults are eaten by prey or humans before making their journey back to the creek of their origins. Only TWO, yes two, make it back to propagate.  It is a good thing other mother's offspring also make it back or we could wind up with only two males or only two females.  But basically, they are on a one for one replacement schema as designed by nature.   So, considering how we have blocked off rivers with damn, polluted rivers and streams with toxic run off, and now how climate change has heated the water to a point it is sometimes to hot for them to swim in, or where the stream is too shallow to travel....it is no wonder their population is following dangerously and some our becoming endangered.

Many cultures have the idea of a "spirit or totem animal."   When my daughter was born fairly early in her life out of the pile of stuffed animals, she pulled out the polar bear and he became her favorite going everywhere with her, and as soon as she understood the concept, she stated that the Polar bear was her totem.  Somewhere around the time she was 7 or 8 I was struck with grief at the realization that for a boomer to have made that choice was one we could walk with the entire length of our life, but that she is likely, due to climate change, to see her totem go extinct.   And in my grief, I realized that it unfortunately fits the reality of what her generation will face on a spiritual level.

There are tribes in the NW who identify as 'We are the People of the Salmon" (and all the NW tribes recognize Salmon as siblings - just as they recognize elk, deer and coyote as such).   And I have heard a plaintiff tribal speaker say:  "We are the people of the Salmon. Who will we be if there are no more Salmon".   This is not like a team who has a mascot and loses it (and can chose another.)   This is a deep expression of all the traditions, and stories, and totems and spiritual practice, and ecological knowledge all imbedded in the relationship with Salmon which would be lost.

I have never had this clear identification of a totem… I neither, in childhood or adulthood, had a special relationship to a species.  I love cats and have a collection of cat knick knacks...but I know that they are pets to me not totems.  As I understand it totems are both to teach us and guide us but also for us to duplicate the strengths of the totem being.  But this is part of the turning in me to learn from nature, from animals.  Recently, as I stood in a Native gift store on a reservation looking at the beautiful way that NW native art represents the soul of animals with symbols inside the outline of the animal, I thought well which of these traditional animals do I related to?   I quickly knew not wolf, or coyote, or whale or eagle...but then Salmon, Oh Yes!   I realized that the reason I am always fascinated by them is I have always related to their uphill struggle of which they will not benefit - their service to life.

For years I have said to folks who worry about climate change that we cannot know the outcome, and it may look quite dire, but that we just have to do the right thing - do the thing that could possibly be for the survival of the species.   I have spent hours and hours of my life in fights that have been entirely uphill - some won and many lost, but swimming out of sense of duty and purpose upstream.  I remember once grieving for a salmon at the Ballard locks that had tried to jump a lock and landed on the concrete side walk and had been unable to get off, perhaps to weak, and had died there.  I mourned that they were so close to the end of their journey but unable to complete their precious mission.  May we have the strength and focus to complete our critical mission on life's behest.