Fish Tales

It snowed in the Cascades. The current forecast is for the snow level to drop to 1000 feet. My house, on top of a hill, sits at about 800 feet. When it snows in Seattle, it snows at my house. It’s been bitter cold for the last few days so a little snow on the ground at breakfast tomorrow morning wouldn’t be a total surprise.

It does snow in town, but only a few times a year and it rarely lasts. It’s a shame because I love snow. Seattle isn’t set up to deal with it very effectively and when enough snow falls for it to stick, the city grinds to a halt. One year I saw a guy on skis down in Pioneer Square and another year a friend and I wandered the neighborhood to visit all of our Friends With Kids. They’d stayed home from school and were building snowmen in their front yards.

Living in Austria as I have done for so many winter’s past, I find it more than a little ridiculous that a few inches of snow make everything stand stock still. I enjoy it all the same, though. It puts the wonder of nature right in front of our eyes and Seattle is really very pretty when our big trees and sidewalks are flocked in white.

You don’t have to go far in Seattle to get big nature. Recently, at Carkeek Park in the north end of the city, we saw bald eagles circle and land in the tops of the towering fir trees. I know there are bald eagles here, I’ve seen them before, but I never cease to be amazed at the size and strength of these enormous birds. At the waterfront wedding of my neighbors J and E, I watched a bald eagle plunge into Puget Sound and emerge carrying a salmon in his fierce claws. “Did you SEE that?!” said a friend at my side. “That must be a good wedding omen in the Pacific Northwest!”

Some time back I made a trip up to Alaska. My travel companion and I bought a whole salmon from a fishery in the town of Homer. We took it to the beach where we were camping, built a big fire, and stuffed ourselves on grilled salmon. I might be disremembering this, but I think we fed some neighboring campers – it’s absolutely the sort of thing I’d do, so induldge the lack of factual retrospection. Even though we’d bought the smallest fish available, were full to bursting, and had fed the neighbors, we still had a ton of salmon. My travel companion walked down to the edge of the water and hurled the rest of the fish back in to the surf. It sounds like a waste, I know, but we couldn’t take it with us and if you think about it, it’s kind of a fitting thing to do.

There are dead salmon on the beach at Carkeek Park. They die as they make their way out of the sound and upriver to spawn. The fish carcasses lie on the beach decaying, their trademark hook jawlines giving away their identities. They wear neon green tags with numbers on them – it’s someone’s job to come out and tag the dead fish – perhaps they’re inventorying them and the green tags are part of that.

I made a note to myself to ask the Internet about why the fish are dying but I wasn’t totally surprised to see them. Salmon are part of the big nature we have here in Seattle, too. Not long after I met the Austrian, I bought a little silver ring in the shape of a salmon. It’s a Northwest Native design and I never take it off. Or, I didn’t, until I broke it. I might be misrembering again, but I think I was with the Austrian at Pike Place Market when I bought a replacement for the one I’d broken. I’m not a baubles kinda gal, but I missed my fish.

Around the same time, I wrote a short story about a woman who picks up a hitchhiker. The next morning, while the woman is still sleeping, the hitchhiker walks down to a nearby stream, steps into the water, and turns into salmon and swims away. After a night of dreaming about the ocean, the woman wakes up and finds a tiny silver salmon that she wears on a chain around her neck as a charm for the rest of her days. My odd little fable was included in an exhibit about storytelling; I was mighty pleased.

The Austrian is a Pisces, the fish in the zodiac, but that’s not the only reason I got the ring. It was a little bit about him, sure, but it was also about my love for the Pacific Northwest. The salmon is a unmistakeable symbol of this area – anyone who lives here and doesn’t think about salmon isn’t paying attention.

While I was wearing my replacement silver salmon ring, the Austrian headed back to the land of snowy winters with the broken one. He returned the following spring with a gift for me. He’d taken the broken ring to a jeweler, had it repaired, and cast in gold. I don’t have a fancy wedding ring, it’s just a tiny gold band, but why would I want anything other than my gold salmon? Wedding rings are supposed to be symbolic, right? I got yer symbolism right here, on my right hand.

Last night at Thanksgiving dinner one of the guests mentioned his search for a place to retire. While I’m nowhere near retirement age, my divided state makes me think all the time about Where To Live. I think about my city that has salmon and bald eagles and sometimes snow and always water. The weather is gloomy and I think this was the third rainiest November on record. But if I could get the Austrian here full time, there is no place I’d rather be.

—

• It’s too late this year, but here’s how to be a salmon watcher.
• Here’s the Haida legend about Salmon Boy.
• And here’s one about why the salmon come to the Squamish people.

[tags]Pacific Northwest, salmon[/tags]