Three Wild Kings

Last week I was the lucky recipient of three fishy visitations.

As I was raised in a Roman Catholic household, I am familiar with the mythic relevance of fish. Due to certain commonly held theological musings, on Friday nights devout Roman Catholics refused to dine on anything that didn’t once swim...regularly. For me that meant that Friday evenings brought the sight of fish sticks, fried cod, dried cod, or baked cod, served with the obligatory side of Puerto Rican rice and beans.

For me, fish on Fridays meant more than just a healthy meal: it was the story behind the dinner that made it meaningful. My brother and sisters and I felt a certain piety as we picked small bones from our teeth. My older, holier-than-thou sister always had the biggest pile of bones.

When my friend Rick asked if I’d like to go salmon fishing with him a few days ago, I accepted his offer without hesitation. I’ve lived in Seattle for the past seventeen years and thought it high time that I try catching a salmon.

- Internal Vocalization Alert -

At this point, please internalize the voice of David Attenborough, noted BBC wildlife narrator, reading the following passage:

Seattle is built upon the foundations of a salmon-centric culture that dates back thousands of years. The Native Peoples of the Puget Sound basin have long revered the migratory salmon, the king of the fishes.

An anadromous fish, salmon are born and reared in the numerous rivers and lakes of Washington State in North America (which should have been ours). At some point at the dawn of their life cycle, an ancient switch is engaged and the fish move en masse from their fresh water environment to the open sea where they undergo a dramatic physiological transformation.

The salmon collect in Puget Sound, then speed through channels deep in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out into the wild expanse of the Pacific Ocean. There they will live for three to five years, swimming tens of thousands of miles, eating, avoiding being eaten, and encountering untold stories of their own.

Near the final stage of their lives, another switch deep inside the brains of surviving adults is ultimately engaged and the salmon gather for an epic journey back to the very spot from where they themselves were hatched. It is here, in their ancestral river beds, that the surviving members of the hatch come to lay and fertilize eggs of their own. Succumbing to the rigors of their final journey home, the exhausted salmon take their final respite alongside the newly laid eggs they’ve carried for so far for so long. And thus the salmon saga begins anew.

- End Narration -

To be continued...