David Martin Olson, a former river guide, is a writer and photographer who lives in Sacramento. http://www.sacbee.com/325/story/2324338.html
A friend shared this beautiful short story with us and we pass it on to you. It appeared in the Sacramento Bee on November 15 this year. The Sac Bee on its webpage indicated that it could be shared.
A few years ago, my son and I walked along the American River at Sailor Bar, throwing rocks into the green water. He was still small enough to need my hand walking over uneven ground. We sat on the cobblestones and tossed hunks of granite while gulls and mallards turned in the air over our heads.
"There's a bird, Daddy!" my son yelled. I smiled and told him that bird had a funny name. He tried to say it, savoring the last syllable like I had, "Mer-gan-zzzerrr." We had come in December, like so many Californians do, to see the salmon migration. Their long journey, in from the Pacific, through the Delta and up the Sacramento and American rivers, ends here each autumn. Many lay their eggs in the gravel beds around Sailor Bar. We could see them, their fins breaking the surface now and then as they guarded their eggs. The weak ones, close to death, lay on their sides in the shallows, barely moving. The bodies of others had been hauled ashore by fishers or curious people like us. The stench of their decay filled the air.
Harsh, yes – but I wanted my son to learn this story. I wanted him to see the return of the salmon as one of the totems of life here, an ancient story that ties us to this land and gives a sense of permanence in an ever-changing world, and evidence of forces beyond us. I also want my son to know a place, his place, the land under his feet each day as he grows up, the unique rhythms and species and cycles of the American River watershed where he has spent nearly every day of his life.
Living by this river is a gift, but that gift is fading.
The 2008 Chinook salmon run, just 66,000 fish, was the lowest in recorded history. Government agencies imposed almost total bans on fishing of these salmon in an effort to preserve the species. Biologists believe many factors are responsible for this decline, most of them, unfortunately, caused by humans: loss of habitat, pollution, invasive species, water diversions and climate change. UC Davis fisheries expert Peter Moyle, in a 2008 report, said, "If present trends continue, California will have only 'museum' populations or runs of most salmonids, maintained with very high effort for display purposes, to remind people what has been lost."
This is not an isolated problem. Scientists have long warned of a new, planet-wide age of extinctions. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson warns that "humanity is in a final struggle with the rest of life," and believes that unless we change our ways, half the species on Earth will be gone by the end of the 21st century, gone into what he calls "the dawn less night of extinction."
We already see the economic poverty of such an age, with fishing boats idle in harbors and San Joaquin farmers struggling without enough water. But what I fear is an inner loss, a poverty of the mind and soul in a biologically depleted world. As author Rebecca Solnit writes, "Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech."
We have looked to the story of salmon for wisdom for millennia. These fish were painted onto the walls of caves 10,000 years ago.The Makah, Haida and Tlingit tribes of the Pacific Northwest await the first salmon of the season, marking the occasion with a religious ceremony. In Celtic mythology, the folk hero Fionn accidentally tastes a salmon he caught in Fec's Pool and receives the power of prophecy and the gift of poetry.
And from the book of Job: "But ask the animals, and they will teach you … let the fish of the sea inform you."
And one windswept December day this father walked with his son on the banks of a river, hoping to show him something about the world. The stones shifted under our feet and the birds squawked over our heads. Lessons learned this way, through all the senses, may not always be happy or comfortable, but they lodge within us somewhere beyond memory, and last a lifetime.
Will my son bring his children to this river? Will he be able to use the salmon's struggle to teach them something about life and death? Will there still be fins flashing in the sunset, or only dark water?
Today, Californians are discussing important issues – water, agriculture, and endangered species – in opinion pages, legislative meetings and pickup trucks parked beside dry fields. We are discussing our needs and nature's needs and how to balance them before it is too late. I don't pretend to know what the answers will be, but I do know something about the needs of the spirit, to feel a part of the larger world and to pass on those gifts to our children. Please let that be a part of our discussion.#
David Martin Olson, a former river guide, is a writer and photographer who lives in Sacramento.