Old Mermaids Healing Works

Salmon are the soul of the place where I make my home in the Columbia River Gorge. I have believed that for as long as I can remember. They are nearly extinct, driven to their ends by the dams, logging, global warming, overfishing, and pollution. Millions of dollars have been spent studying the salmon, trying to figure out how to save them. Some believe the wild salmon is already extinct in the Nch’I Wana—the Columbia River; some say only fishery salmon make the trip down the Big River to the ocean and then back again.

The River people of this area, as well as most other aboriginal peoples of the North Pacific Rim, have depended upon salmon as a food and spiritual source for thousands of years. Tribes in the Pacific Northwest still celebrate the First Salmon and the returning salmon.

Salmon are amazing creations: They are born in a freshwater, they spend time in freshwater rivers, and they swim into the ocean where they may travel thousands of miles until they get the urge to return home. Then they try (and often succeed) to fling themselves up waterfalls (or fish ladders) and up the River until they find their way to the spawning grounds.

Old timers say that the Nch’I Wana ran so red with salmon that you could walk along their backs to get to the other shore. In 1855, 14 million salmon ran the rivers; in 1996 only 75,000 were left.

I do not eat salmon caught in the Columbia River. The last time I knowingly ate a salmon from the River was several years ago at an encampment in Lyle where a local tribe was trying prevent a developer from building near a tribal fishing platform. My husband, Mario, and I attempted to support the encampment. Mario wrote a story for our area paper and for the Yakama Nation Review. And we came for the celebration. The Native Elders called the directions and sang blessings. Then we ate. The wind was wicked, as we sat so close to the Nch’I Wana, swirling dust and smoke from the fire around us. I always feel like an intruder when I attend Native celebrations, even when I have been invited, and this day was no different. I didn’t know what to say or do. So I tried to keep my mouth shut—opening it long enough to eat the proffered feast foods—which included salmon. To not eat, it seemed to me, would have been rude. Besides, I thought, the Spirits of the Place would be with me. All was safe.

I was sick for a week.

In many places along the Columbia River, the water quality exceeds acceptable levels of dioxin, a highly dangerous chemical by-product produced by paper mills and other industrial polluters. Hanford constantly leaks radioactive water into the River. Yet salmon still swim in the Big River; sturgeon still haunt the river bottom.

One fall Mario and I stood on the bridge spanning Rock Creek near our house and watched two returning salmon attempting to swim upstream. They looked exhausted, red and mottled white. The first one, a bit smaller than the other, was trying to get up this small shelf of rocks but the force of the stream kept pushing her back. The other salmon, the male I supposed, was right on her tail or along her side the entire time. He would not let her rest. Each time she tried and failed, he gave her no respite—he pushed and bullied her again and again (or he nudged and encouraged her—I don’t mean to anthropomorphize them). I felt sorry for the female and yelled, “No means no, buddy!” Again and again the couple failed to get any further upstream. After a while, Mario and I continued our walk, no longer able to watch this salmon version of Sisyphus constantly pushing a boulder up a hill.

My ancestors, the ancient Irish and French, believed the salmon were sacred, too, the wisest of creatures as well as one of the oldest. The salmon came from the Well of Wisdom where they were imbued with divine illumination, in part from eating the hazelnuts that dropped into the Well of Wisdom. Poets longed to eat the sacred salmon: Then they too would know all.

When I became a vegetarian, I naturally stopped eating all fish, but the asthma I already had got worse. I asked the salmon if I could continue eating them. (Most indigenous people who eat salmon believe the salmon willingly give up their lives to humans; some believe they were once actually human.) I pray to the salmon now each time I eat it.

Sometimes I dream of salmon. Once I dreamed I saw one of my uncles fishing in the Nch’I Wana. After he left, I walked to the water. The River was red with salmon—full of salmon, some alive, but most of the red came from pieces of salmon—as if my uncle had put some in the water to prime it in some manner, only he had put in way too much.

Once I dreamed I was a salmon, struggling to get over a bridge and then home again.

Salmon have sustained the people here for thousands of years. They turned the Big River blood red every fall for thousands of years. The First People prayed to them, danced alongside the water in praise of them, caught and cooked them according to proscribed rituals. And then they saw the salmon disappear with the advent of the white people.

Near where I live is a place called Celilo Falls: the Great Falls. Humans have used this site for at least 12,000 years. Water roared over basalt cliffs and rapids and created three main fishing sites. Native People built wooden platforms out over the Nch’I Wana. They stood on rocks or wooden platforms with a rope around their waists to keep them from falling into the water; they caught fish using lines, nets, and harpoons. Women prepared the fish once it was caught. Children played nearby.

Then the Corps of Engineers built a dam. On March 10, 1957, the dam was put into service. The water slowly rose. People who lived here during that time say the People stood on both sides of the Big River watching until the water drowned the Falls. The Great Falls fell silent: the voice of the Mother forever stilled, the lullaby the People had heard all of their lives gone, the song their ancestors had listened to for millennia silenced.

It is said that the People turned their backs on the Big River; tears spilled down their cheeks. Their grief continues to this day. If you drove by the place, you would have no idea that a waterfall once broke the Big River into dangerous rapids. Some believe it was the worst thing that has ever happened to this area. The salmon runs have gotten smaller and smaller each year since then.

Mario interviewed an older white man who lived above the Columbia River near where the Falls had been. He had the oldest apricot tree in the area, and it was a perfect subject for Mario’s monthly article in the local Ruralite paper. During the conversation, Mario asked if the man had been there before the Falls had drowned.

The man nodded and said he had fallen asleep to the sound of Celilo Falls all of his life. Then it was gone. His voice caught as he continued, “We didn’t really know what we had until it was gone.”

After I dreamed about the Big River becoming red with salmon again, I swore I would do something to save the salmon. I wrote to every group in the area that was working to save the salmon. I never heard back from any of them. I wondered what I could do on my own. I cut back on my use of water. I bought only wild salmon. (Buying wild salmon actually helps preserve wild salmon.) But what else?

How does one save the soul of a place?

It seems like such an uphill fight.

An upstream fight?

I love the salmon. I love their tenacity. I love that they can live in two worlds: one with saline, one without. I love that they are golden and then red. Shapeshifters. The Celts wrote poetry at the water’s edge, trying to get as close to the wisdom of the salmon as they could, convinced they would then be filled with imbas—divine illumination—from one of the wisest and oldest of all animals.

I love that when the salmon decide to return home, they let little get in their way. They endure all sorts of hardships to find home again. Once they are home, they spawn and then they die.

Often in the fall, I go to Rock Creek or Eagle Creek, to a place before these rivers spill into the Big River. I crouch at the water’s edge and I ask the Salmon what I can do for them.

Perhaps one day they will imbue me with the answers. Or divine illumination. Maybe they will ask me to tell a story or two about them.

Is that enough to save the soul of a place?

This essay originally appeared in my book Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement put out by Aqueduct Press.