Anadromous Fascina

After the 4th view of The Great Salmon Run I couldn't see the fish they filmed, the 5 kinds of Pacific Salmon that somehow swim straight up torrents to the places of their births on their 4th year, feeding numerous other species and fertilizing the coastal forests in the process, as anything other than another parable of The Sacrificial Fish. Why it has to die after spawning no one knows, the Atlantic Salmon don't, but in their deaths they nourish the rich forests that grow beyond the streams, 80 percent of the woodland's wealth of nitrogen comes from the Pacific via the decaying bodies of salmon, lying on the forest floor where they've been dragged by the foragers they sate.

Unfortunately my 4-year old watched the time lapse segment when the salmon carcass blackens, desiccates and decays into the moss it lies on. She began to ask the inevitable question "Will we...." I was relieved that she couldn't bring herself to finish, because I don't think I could have brought myself to answer. She had trouble sleeping that night, and I told her a story about the fish, that it becomes trees and other creatures after it disappears into the forest floor, as it melts into the sweet darkness of the soil, powering the spiring growth of the coastal forests.

Did these fish ever exist? The record is in nature if you can trace it. But others would say the fish only ever appeared to exist, that "fish" could never be fit over the mysterious arising of these aquaborn. Seeing them dissolve via time lapse our tiny finity slips out of our hands, we see what some meant when they say that what has dependent arising never ultimately existed, even if it really seemed to when we walked in speed with it, or dance with it as the hungry grizzlies who've evolved great skill at catching the slippery creatures. Like the grizzlies, our bodies are here, now, responding to the present moment, merging, intersecting with, hunting or defending against the emergent properties of other creaturely bodies, modalities of the same substance whose nuances escape the mind's grasping. Both real and unreal, we are in the ring whether we like it or not.

In the mass die-off after spawning, which may be happening even now across the continent, do the salmon overcome the world, or are they the victim of the callous clocks of the mundane? I can't say, I only see the endless generosity at the heart of nature, the core of being, the heart of matter wherein one creature lets slip its form to nourish symphonies of emergent orders.

Man prefers to be buried in boxes, our nutrients kept guarded from nature's hungry tendrils, and instead of fertilizing the grounds for our children's crops, we toxify them with the effluvia of our self-glorification, the poison detritus of the lily's gilding. I suppose we could do much better at scaling torrents than we've done in modern times. To attain such heights, one can't carry baggage. These are no mere fish.

I opened the Dhammapadha at random, and read about "he who swims upstream," he who pays heed neither to his aversions or attractions but keeps to the way, or "people whose direction is not with the current but upstream, against all the normal urges of human conditioning." It seems Pacific Salmon, the Chinook, Chum, Coho, Humpback and Sockeye teach these lessons, too. As Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree he did exactly that, dismissing all delusions of self-glorification spun by our inner demons until no more seduction was possible, he touched the ground, like these salmon, pulled to the forest floor. Jesus, nailed to the cross, having overcome the world, heading upstream with no return possible, having fed the souls of those starving for truth upon the fat of this wisdom. Oh, he had no sense at all, did he, there were so many things he could have done to save himself. Was he too busy harvesting the krill of truth from subtle waters to consider his welfare?

It is in the light of the atrocities of nature that Isaac-as-lamb and Jesus as redeemer and sustainer of hope paint pictures of the human condition that few are comfortable with, mere animals, flesh, subject to matter's chaos, but somehow trusting that there's a greater order in it. Is it any wonder that the early Gnostics hated matter, with all its challenges, with its overpowering currents of sheer chaos?