Pacific Salmon
"River-born fugitives, red muscled under sheathing silver,
alive with lights of ocean's changing colours,
the range of deeps and distances through wild salt years
has gathered the sea's plenty into your
perfection.
Fullness is the long return from dark depths
rendering toll of itself to the searching nets
surging on to
strife on brilliant gravel shallows
that opened long ago behind the failing ice.
In violence over the gravel,
under the burn of fall,
fullness spends itself,
thrusting forth new life to nurse in the stream's flow.
The old life, used utterly,
yields itself among the river rocks of home."
~Roderick Haig-Brown~
Last weekend we saw part of the biggest run of sockeye salmon in a century. They had toiled out of the ocean where we sail on weekends, upstream for endless miles, through the coastal rainforest, into the mountains, lakes, and flats, to their natal spawning grounds on the Adams River, where they flirted for a moment, spawned, and died.
For me, after a night in the caboose that was reborn as a hostel, I returned home to see the signs that another summer was drawing to a close. Termination dust had appeared above Vancouver, and leaves glistened yellow, red, and everything in between. Now a week later, most of the leaves have fallen, and with a chill in the air, the biking trails are slick and the armwarmers are on.
Autumn Song
"Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is calling
To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
And why should I stay behind?"
~Sarojini Naidu~
It is now time for Diwali - a festival of light as darkness encroaches. This is Lakshmi's festival - the Hindu goddess of light, beauty, good fortune and wealth. A time to be thankful for what we have, and have experienced as our journey's continue.
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