Reading about the bounty of this New World when the first Europeans arrived, I always wondered what it must have been like to see flocks of birds that blackened the skies, plentiful deer, fish that swam so thick that you could walk across their backs and not get wet. These descriptions are fanciful these days especially when I read about the mass extinctions because of climate change, loss of habitat and over harvesting. Occasionally where I live, I see big concentrations of rare and endangered plant life and I am thrilled by the vision of these stands and can fill in the blanks to flesh out what might have been – as I wrote about in the Spring Ephemerals post. Where I live, I never expected to see the intense beauty of an animal migration other than Spotted Salamanders crossing from wetland to wetland – which is spectacular.
In Brewster, MA on the Cape, there’s a Herring run. There, I had the chance to witness the magic of the herring making their way upstream to their spawning grounds. Upon arrival, it is hard to see what is going on, but as I watched and looked, I was fortunate to witness a spectacular migration. What I thought had only been ripples on a pool was a concentration of fish that were moving with the rhythm of the water or was the water moving with their rhythm? Here was a place where I could walk across the backs of fish to the other side of the pool – giving me a window into what those early colonists were talking about and more profoundly, inspiring me with the power of instinct.
That these small fish could find their ways back to their origins, and then at the end of their journey navigate their way upstream to spawn and die humbled me. I found myself cheering for individual fish as they made their way up the ladder and then finally into the spawning pond. The entrance to the pond is narrow and rich fuchsia in comparison to the foamy cold green of the waters in the ladder. Seeing each fish pass thorough into the still waters above, I could sense the tension and stress of the migration melt as the fish would shoot by, slow and float. It was beautiful and inspiring, perfect for a spring meditation.
