We stop at a footbridge over Whatcom Creek, where you like to check for salmon. It’s our first summer in Washington. There are many things we know to look for, like huckleberries and Bigfoot and whales, and many things we’ve seen already, like glaciers and evergreens and Mt. Rainier.
I make a show of gazing over to humor you, but all I see when I look down are browns and blues and then what rises to the surface is a memory of my grandma’s papery skin, pale with pinprick spots of brown and red. I continue to inspect the water, shouting when I see a swirl of plump silver speckled with brown. I point, helping you see it, too.
The longer we look for the salmon, the easier it is to spot them. We keep saying, “They’re swimming upstream! They’re doing it!” Neither of us scientists, we know just enough to be enchanted. We watch the salmon fight against the current. The smaller ones make daunting leaps over a prominent rock face. The larger ones find success flipping and flopping with brute strength across shallow water and mossy bits of rock.
Some fall short and get pulled back past where they began. When I hear their bodies make violent wet slaps against the rock, I wonder how their bones stay unbroken. I yell out encouragement, but what they are doing is beyond language. It is both a travel route and a destiny that spirals and curls with their DNA.
Watching the salmon, I think again of my grandma, her body diminished to a hum of pain. At the hospice, she slept, fidgeted, or struggled to speak, her sharp mind muddied with drugs and worry. The way that salmon swim upstream to spawn, that’s how my grandma is with worry. She’s probably still worrying now.
Eventually, reluctantly, we leave it behind, this spectacle of nature. I put my arms around your waist, kiss you on the lips, overtaken by the romance of watching creatures do exactly what they were born to do. I wonder if maybe we can do the same.
Erin Schallmoser (she/her) lives in Bellingham, WA, works by day as a naturopathic clinic manager, and delights in moss, slugs, stones, wildflowers, small birds, and the moon, when she can see it. She’s also a poetry/prose editor and staff contributor at The Aurora Journal and is still figuring out Twitter @dialogofadream. You can read more at erinschallmoser.com/.