Swimming up stream

Swimming up Stream and Home
by Michael Cannarella

Reading about the life cycle of the Salmon, freshwater and saltwater fish has given me a paradigm from nature for my own life and growth. I see the Salmon born in freshwater then migrating to the sea and then at the end of life returning to it’s origins in the fresh water as a nice cycle that can have meaning for humans. Those great pictures of the fish jumping out of the water going up stream. What a strong, happy, deep affirmation for life I feel when I see them.

I believe humans as they grow older begin the journey up stream seeking meaning in non-material ways not unlike those flying Salmon. In our culture this is swimming up stream, a spiritual journey. I feel that strong affinity with the fish, willing to leave the familiar and use my strength to return, not as a baby born in the fresh water but as an adult with a purpose, this an affirmation of my own life..

I have even been reading about the different types of Salmon. My totem, when I chose one was the Chinook. This is the big fish. It lives the longest, five to eight years. Some of the Indians simply called it “the swimmer”, they are powerful swimmers, mostly muscle. They have good eye sight, more sensitive than our eyes, and there is even a point directly in front of them where both eye’s vision overlap, where they can see best. They are particularly sensitive to the color red, the color of one of their favorite foods, shrimp, and for females the color of the male salmon when he returns to spawn and die. They also have a good sense of smell ( one of their hindrance to returning home is the smell of humans in the water, they stop the journey if they smell humans) and for taste they often hold food in their teeth to taste before swallowing it.

The pictures of the returning salmon always show a school, a whole group. And I often think of my community like that group of salmon swimming up stream on their way home. Found here is both the individual struggle and the sense that you share this struggle with others battling the current. You and the others although you struggle, are expressing something instinctual, something that makes you human and by understanding this and sharing it, each of us are stronger and can therefore struggle longer and cope with the set backs. So too I believe for the salmon.

The scientists still are not sure how the salmon finds it's way home. Some travel over 1,000 miles up stream. Do they use their light sensitivity to find the way? Their sense of smell? Sensitivity to magnetic fields? Most scientists believe the Salmon uses several senses to find their way home and so this too, we humans share with the fish on the spiritual journey home. No one can say for sure what it takes to find home and know you've found home but it seems likely that all of the senses will be used and needed. In my mind anyone who has THE WAY is like one salmon trying to take another home. That's not what I see in those fish pictures. Each of the fish and humans has to follow our own way and each of us has the guiding mechanism to do it. I don't know if Salmon need to have faith that they can find their way, but humans do.

Finally, as I read of the declining Salmon runs and the many barriers humans have created for them, the destruction of their ecosystem I too feel their pain in a very direct way. For us humans the spiritual journey too has been blocked and marginalized by our culture and so we suffer as do the fish. But as with the fish all of the instincts are there in us. I feel joy and a deep identification with the fish when I see the pictures of them jumping into the air, battling the current, swimming up stream on their way home.