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Lawrence, Iain. “Diary Of A Salmon.” PRINCE RUPERT, BC. Prince Rupert This Week. June 9, 1996:18 & continued, June 16, 1996:18 From his column "Across the Harbor" by Iain Lawrence - Diary of a Salmon Day 1459. I feel as though I’m caught up in something I don’t understand. All day we’ve been swimming toward the morning sun, a huge band spread through the ocean. For as far as I can see, sunlight is glinting off salmon backs, like a speckling of scales, as though we’re all little parts of one huge fish. There seems to be a purpose to this, some force that is with us. Day 1460. Happy birthday to all of us. We are four years old today. Day 1464. Edgar says we’re going home. The word tingles like the sting of a jellyfish. It makes me think of water that is thick with air, water that tumbles and roars. Fresh water, clear and cold, tasting of land. Oh, it will be good to be home! Day 1469. Swam all day between Edgar and Sam. They’re big guys, eight pounds each, all silver and muscle. Edgar says home is a place high far from the sea, a calm little creek warmed by sunlight. There’s a pool there, he says, in a forest, where we can lounge on the bottom and feel the sun on our backs, and pass the years eating worms and laughing. Day 1471. A scent of cedar in the water today. There’s land ahead, maybe a hundred miles off. Sam swims back and forth through our big travelling band, telling them of Edgar’s vision. If Edgar says it’s so, it must be true. And we surged on. Day 1473. Gorged ourselves on tiny shrimp. there were thousands of them and thousands more, and we charged through the school, breaking it up. What sport! We chased them down, eating them whole. An excellent day. Day 1474. From the twilight the Orcas came. We heard them from miles away, their sonar washing over us. A faint ‘ping’ at first, distant and searching. We turned to the south but they followed, and the sound grew louder. We went deep, but they closed in. They drove us ahead of them, the sonar locked on - Ping! Ping! Ping! - and behind it we heard their voices, those awful creaks and groans. Seven or eight of them, all around. PING! PING! PING! PING! And we panicked. We bunched into a huge ball, and those on the outside tried to force their way to the middle. I was jostled and shoved, and the sonar blasted against me - so loud that it ached in my liver and bones. The orcas came rushing at us, churning the water. They got thirty on the first pass, forty the next. And they kept coming back, until the sea was black with our blood. Now Sam is bleeding badly - there’s a gouge in his shoulder. I stay with him, close to the surface. He’s scared that the dogfish will find him. Day 1477. Heard the humpbacks singing, and in the afternoon propeller sounds. Edgar said it was trollers, the line-stringers, and he took us deep again. That was hard on Sam. he’s stopped bleeding but he can’t go below twenty feet. he hovered above us, all alone, a little black speck in an infinite sea. Day 1488. What’s happening to us? Sam is growing a twisted hook on the end of his nose. The silver is fading from Edgar’s belly; his back is turning hard and lumpy. Whatever it is, I think I’ve got it too. I have a pain inside that’s always there. Edgar says we’ll be all right when we get home. When we’re home we’ll be whole again, and safe. But I’m afraid. The water ahead tastes of death. Day 1480. passed the first island this morning. We drew together and swarmed over the shallows. And the trollers were waiting. Big, flashing balls hurtled past, and behind them came small things swimming and darting. The guy beside me took one. I saw his mouth close around it - then a little burst of skin and blood - and a metal spike shot out of his nose. He thrashed and he fought, but it hauled him up - slowly and steadily - hauled him up to the place above the sea. And when I looked around, there were others going up - thirty or forty, each one spinning and twirling on the end of a string, vanishing into the golden glow of the dawn. Day 1483. I think Sam is dying. His eyes are huge and glassy. He rolls sideways and staggers up and down; his tail shivers as he swims. Edgar urges him on, filling him again with the strength of this strange force. he talks of home, of how the fresh water will clean out our gills and wash the lice from our scales. Others will be there, waiting for us. Edgar says that our fathers and mothers, all the salmon that ever lived, are waiting at home. Day 1490. Last night we hit the nets. We came on them in the blackness - suddenly they were there. The front runners plowed straight in. The mesh tightened on their gills, and the more they struggled the harder it held them, and I found them dangling - drowning - huge sheets of dying fish that rippled and swayed in the current. behind each net was another net. They stretched from each shore out to the middle, from the surface five fathoms down. I glided by on the tide, just above the bottom, and above me were hundreds of bodies - white bellies that seemed to float, like the stars in a black void. They were all facing home. Day 1492. Sam went belly up today. A sea lion got him. It came burning down from above the sea, and snatched him up by the tail. It snapped its head, and Sam turned inside out, flesh tearing loose from skin. His body landed - pink and trembling, a blob spined with bones and oozing blood - twenty feet away. The lion dropped the skin, and it floated down among us, an empty shrivelled pouch. On the inside were white - almost silvery white - like the top of the sea on a sunny day. Day 1495. Fresh water! At first it’s bitter and tart, and we stay below it until it comes down to meet us. Now it pushes against us, forcing us back. It’s strong, but it’s so clean and so good. We’re just five days from home! Day 1496. Edgar is dead. It was a boy who killed him, a child with a fishing rod. He was beside me then gone; plucked straight from the river. Then hands came down into the water, small hands that would barely have circled his tail. I could smell the blood streaming off, and see the scales flurry by, silvery dots that swirled in the river, floating back to the sea. Day 1499. Getting shallow. Hard to swim. We look like monsters - red and scarred, hunchbacked and ugly. I wonder how long it will take to change back to silvery fat, once we get home. It must happen. Edgar said it was so. Day 1500. Something is terribly wrong. There are no salmon waiting at home, no freshwater pools. We’ve come here to rut, only to rut in the gravel and die. The shore is covered with bloated bodies; the water stinks of rot. Those barely alive tumble down on the current, red things rolling over gravel and stone. Bears eat us alive, and gulls feed on the dead. And the sun beats down, burning our bodies. I want to go back. I want to go back to the sea. |