salmon ovenbird The Fraser is alive and muscular, throwing itself against fate and time and mortality. Dozens of fishing lines are cast out over the teeming water. I have only rods and cones, so I cast my eyes across the river, reel in this shining spectacle, wild and amazing. Hundreds of fish leap clear of the surface, their tails flapping against the air’s invisible current in their desperation for home. Through sheer will the Water-Born teach themselves to fly. “Are they salmon?” I shout and a fisherman hears me, smiles, says “Yes!” and I can hear the wonder in his voice. None of us have seen anything like this. We are having a record run, the salmon returning in numbers not seen in nearly thirty years. The river gets dressed in fins and gills and scales and I feel my heart swimming, made buoyant by something akin to hope. In a world that is dying due to our own failures in environmental stewardship this is an incredible win. Ambitious habitat restoration projects developed and overseen by local indigenous communities, in cooperation with the provincial government, have played a pivotal role in making this possible. We are seeing the changes wrought by intentional care of our watersheds and the animals that depend on them. I can’t stop exclaiming, “Look, there’s another one! Did you see how high it jumped?” I’m cheering them on, these migratory miracles, their flesh flaming to red as they complete the impossible journey to their spawning grounds. Their internal fires will consume them in their final reproductive frenzy, and their last act will be to feed the future on a diet of nitrogen and phosphorus, wrested from their own decaying flesh. I send my godless prayers with them–may they summon the power to resist the punishing currents, may they find the waters that call them home, may their numbers grow so they can take their rightful place in the unfolding mystery of the universe and may we see how our lives depend on theirs, all of us bound together in our run towards survival. 250826 what's it to you? who go blather from