Meaning, by David James Duncan

[Jennie@ifish]

I just had to share both this beautiful picture of a beautiful gal with a beautiful fish, and the following David Duncan quote that truly touches me!
Here ya go!

Aren't vacations the great! We only got one picture of me holding this fish; it was too heavy. Still bright after 5 hours in the cooler and meat marbled like it had been raised on a feed lot. If you haven't vacationed in the Illwaco/Astoria area for fishing you're missing out. Sturgeon in June and July, Salmon in August and September. Good restraurants, camping, hotels, sight seeing and shopping. For the fisherman there are lots of launches, and places to have your fish cleaned and packaged. This is the biggest fish I've been lucky enough to land, but there is usually a 40+ lb fish in our vaction for one family member each year. Finally it was my year. More passion below the photo for those who like us, EAT....SLEEP....GO FISHING..... (or think about it when we're not!) Cheers, Liz Hamilton

MEANING, BY DAVID JAMES DUNCAN from the book "My Story as Told By Water" copyright 2001. You can order it, off of this ifish page. I simply adore this entire book... but then again, I adore all of his books, and him! :smile:

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"On the eastern edge of Idaho last fall, seven hundred miles from the sea, I watched a single female chinook, with great, crimson-gilled gasps of effort, turn her ocean-built body into a shovel and dig, in the unforgiving bone of the continent, a home for offspring she would not live long enough to see. I watched her lay eggs so tender the touch of a child's fingertip would crush them, eggs exactly the color of setting suns. I watched the darker, fiercer-kyped male ease in front of those suns without once touching the female, and send milt melting down into her nest of stones. I watched the paired chinook circle their pebbled redd, tending it, guarding it. Yet only incidentally, as if by accident, did they touch each other. Because they weren't making love to one another.

They were making love to the very land and water, to broken bits of mountain and melting snow. I left them to die, as salmon do, their clutch of eggs orphaned in a frigid gravel womb. As I write these words, winter has snapped down in the Rockies. Snow is mounting. But in that ice-covered streambed nest, which the female covered with protective pebbles with her last few strokes of life, tiny eyes are even now appearing in her sun-colored eggs.

There is a fire in water. There is an invisible flame, hidden in water, that creates not heat but life. And in this bewildering age, no matter how dark or glib some humans work to make it, wild salmon still climb rivers and mountain ranges in absolute earnest, solely to make contact with that flame. Words can't reach deep or high enough to embody this wonder. Only wild salmon can embody it. Each migration, each annual return from the sea, these incomparable creatures climb our inland mountains and sacrifice their lives, that tiny silver beings may be born of an impossible watery flame."

[FisherJack]

Very nice! Very nice feeesh. Very nice pic. Very nice prose.

[5-Cents]

What a beautiful fish and that quote simply says it all!

[lilnorthfork]

Thanks Jennie. Every fall I head into my favorite trib, with the pretense of fishing for steelhead, just to watch the salmon spawn. Two years ago one particular fish caught my eye as it made its last trip out of the current and into the shelter of a half-submerged cedar tree, listing every few moments. I put down my gear and sat on the bank for an hour, maybe two, I don't know for sure, and watched as that big chinook took its last breaths and, finally, turned with the gentlest of motions on to its side and stayed there. I was left with the feeling I had glimpsed the birth, death and rebirth of a universe.
lnf

[Carpe piscis]

Absolutely awesome quote and fish. This is what it is all about. Thanks for sharing Jennie.

[Jennie@ifish]

Thanks for sharing, LIZ. :smile:

Jen

[Gus Orviston]

I will be buying! gus and obvious duncan fan.

[Jennie@ifish]

I have all of his books. One is signed.

No ones writing touches me more deeply.

J

[Pescadote]

Nice picture and great post. I am also a huge Duncan fan. What a beautiful passage.

Pescadote

The spring chinook are spawning in the upper Trask and I witnessed a pair yesterday. I've seen this many,many times but it never ceases to stop me where I am and watch in amazement

[Fred N]

Nice fish Liz!