King Salmon

King Salmon

            Under the bone white moon lattices of king salmon ribs litter the banks of their birth streams.  Below the murmuring surfaces of westward running streams, smolts burst from their clear coral eggs stell wearing yolk sacs on their bulging bellies.  If the embryonic fish survive the hungry mouths of predators on their westward trips to Lake Michigan, they will return to their birth place at maturity.  It is their place to be born, to spawn and to die.

            The imprint of their birth place enters into their bodies along a sense organ called the lateral line that carries an accurate map and compass.  It is a network of circuitry more intricate than the West Michigan river systems.  The fish will be able to return with the certainty of the cycling planets and constellations of stars.

     In the jade green waters of the inland sea, Lake Michigan, king salmon gorge on smaller fish and crustaceans.  Their skins speckled with dark colored spots carry the blue sheen of sky and the earth tones of forest.  They feed their voracious dream of the birth stream until their bodies grow heavy with it. Their bodies are stuffed with coral eggs or pearly white milt—female and male.  For both sexes the dream is the same.  It enters the tops of their heads as the sun streams into their pineal gland and gathers force.

     In the freedom of the sweetwater sea, they bide their time, slowly fanning their tails, drifting through layers of warm and cool water called the thermocline.  They drift. In their bodies they carry the wordless undeniable dream: a rocky stream bottom in the shadows of pines, the traceries of ferns, and wildflowers.

            The dream gathers force as the harvest moon grows heavy on the horizon.  Sleek and round from a summer of feeding and their cargo of coral or pearl, they grow restless and cease their feeding.  All at once they streak toward the estuary, linger there for a while, then streak upstream toward their place.  It has been so since the Pleistocene times when the salmon breathed glacial melt water through their red gills.  It is still the same water and still the same urgent force: birth, procreation and death.

           So they ignore baited hooks, snares and leap dams following the ghosts of their migratory ancestors.  Finally they reach the place where they wriggled free of their gelatinous eggs and begin their journeys.  The female fans a hollow in the stones with her tail while the male waits and watches.  She releases the clear coral eggs then the male releases his pearly white milt to fertilize them.  The king salmon have spent it all.  They die and their elements enter other life cycles along the stream. Only their clean bones remain while the new generations gestate on the bottom of the stream.

Salmon Obsessed with Return

An Obsessive Sense of Place

Lattices of salmon ribs litter the banks of a stream.  On cold autumn nights, frost flowers bloom reflecting star light.  The stream babbles and unintelligible song as it rushes westward.  It is the salmons’ place to be born, tow spawn; it is their place to disintegrate and die.  Salmon are anadromous fish, fish evolved to follow an elegant rhythm of always returning to their birth stream to spawn after maturing in a saltwater or sweetwater se.

            For male and female salmon alike, the imprint of place is their obsession.  As smolts they burst from their transparent eggs still wearing a yolk sac on their bulging bellies.  Like their ancient ancestors who breathed glacial meltwater through their gills, the newborns streak down stream to the freedom of the great inland sweetwater seas known as the Great Lakes.  In jade green waters they feed their voracious dream until their bodies grow heavy with it—until they resemble silver purses stuffed with treasure: slick coral beads and pearly white milt.

Summer sun dazzles  down through the thermoclines—the layers of warm, cool, cold water—where it enters through the fishes’ pineal eyes—triangles on top of their heads—giving them sure knowledge of their place in the larger scheme of things.  They bide their time drifting in schools, fanning their tails in repose, gorging on small fish.  They dream of their place where clear water chortles over quartz and granite under shifting shadows of white pine and tamarack.  It is their place and as their urgent need to return gather force under a moon that grows heavy on the horizon, a moon the color of salmon eggs, a moon that must change to bone white, the salmon mill about in the harbor.

The fishes’ bellies grow heavy as the harvest moon.  The dream becomes reality as celestial cues, the sun, the moon, the stars enter each cellule and each dancing atom of their bodies.  Then they begin.  The fish return to their stream and nothing will stop them: they ignore hunger, snares, treble hooks.  On their silvery sides their lateral lines carry everything they need to know; their maps and compasses imbedded in the circuitry of their bodies…the hereditary wisdom of their species carried in a network of circuits from pineal to tail.  It is a sure knowledge of the west Michigan river system linked to the Great Lakes.

                                                                                        --Barbara Spring

Pacific Salmon in the Great Lakes

                                               

   Pacific Salmon Spawning

Lattices of salmon ribs litter the banks of a stream. On cold autumn nights, frost flowers bloom reflecting star light. The stream babbles and unintelligible song as it rushes westward. It is the salmons’ place to be born, to spawn; it is their place to disintegrate and die. Salmon are anadromous fish, fish evolved to follow an elegant rhythm of always returning to their birth stream to spawn after maturing in a saltwater or sweet water seas.

For male and female salmon alike, the imprint of place is their obsession. As smolts they burst from their transparent eggs still wearing a yolk sac on their bulging bellies. Like their ancient ancestors who breathed glacial melt water through their gills, the newborns streak down stream to the freedom of the great inland sweet water seas known as the Great Lakes. In jade green waters they feed their voracious dream until their bodies grow heavy with it—until they resemble silver purses stuffed with treasure: slick coral beads and pearly white milt.

Summer sun dazzles down through the thermoclines—the layers of warm, cool, cold water—where it enters through the fishes’ pineal eyes—triangles on top of their heads—giving them sure knowledge of their place in the larger scheme of things. They bide their time drifting in schools, fanning their tails in repose, gorging on small fish. They dream of their place where clear water chortles over quartz and granite under shifting shadows of white pine and tamarack. It is their place and as their urgent need to return gathers force under a moon that grows heavy on the horizon, a moon the color of salmon eggs, a moon that must change to bone white, the salmon mill about in the harbor.

The fishes’ bellies grow heavy as the harvest moon. The dream becomes reality as celestial cues, the sun, the moon, the stars enter each cellule and each dancing atom of their bodies. Then they begin. The fish return to their stream and nothing will stop them: they ignore hunger, snares, treble hooks. On their silvery sides their lateral lines carry everything they need to know; their maps and compasses embedded in the circuitry of their bodies…the hereditary wisdom of their species carried in a network of circuits from pineal to tail. It is a sure knowledge of the west Michigan river system linked to the Great Lakes, or in other places, other river systems and other fresh or salt water oceans. It is also the wisdom of the constellations and the way their light glaces from silvery skinned fish, sparkling a wisdom older than mankind. To a salmon obsessed with its sense of place, failure means nothing. They defy high dams, leaping, leaping, leaping again and again until they hurl themselves over the top.

Home at last, the female hollows out a nest on the stream bed with her tail then cascades hundreds of coral bead like eggs into it. The male waits driving away his rivals with fierce charges. It is time. The male salmon releases a small galaxy of milt that will begin the life/death cycle again. Male and female have spent their silver purses in the stream. They are finished. In the next few days their flesh will fall away while they linger, easy prey for the raccoons, bears, ospreys and eagles. With their bones picked clean and their young curled in sleep on the stream bed, the transformation begins again. An osprey shadow glides over the shining stream. The sun rises as the moon glows faintly in the West.

Great Lakes Education

People need to know about the Great Lakes

 

In Touch with the World through the www

 

People who live around the Great Lakes often take them for granted.  I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes, to give people enough information to make intelligent choices in their every day lives about the world’s greatest freshwater system.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is a book about their ecology and the mistakes people have made when altering the landscape by making locks for shipping, destroying wetlands or introducing new species both intentionally and unintentionally.  It was my aim in writing this book to make people appreciate these lakes and understand what they might do for their betterment.

 

Most people do not understand the significance of the Great Lakes.  They are twenty per cent of the world’s fresh surface water and need to be protected.  These lakes’ freshwater will be hotly contested as more and more industries and people in arid parts of the world would like to exploit them. It is indeed happening now.   Some large freshwater lakes in the world have been destroyed—drawn down to nothing through a lack of understanding.

 

Bottling plants have their eyes on the Great Lakes.  Bottling water and shipping it out of the watershed will destroy the integrity of the lakes and their unique ecosystems.  People in the Great Lakes watershed argue that the water belongs to the commons and should not be sold for private profit.  There are many more issues the book addresses: directional drilling for oil, nuclear power plants, exotic species, wetlands, sand dunes and pollution from industries and municipalities. 

 

  

I wrote the book and created this website so that people might find the information they need about the Great Lakes. It gives the basics and yet limnologists have told me they learned things about the Great Lakes they did not know, while general readers have told me that they never appreciated the Great Lakes until they read my book.  Another motive in writing the book was to raise consciousness about the greatest freshwater system on the surface of Earth and the need to protect what we have.  Armed with such knowledge, people are in a good position to make good decisions about the lakes.

 

One of the first educational websites and newsletters that featured The Dynamic Great Lakes website was www.Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk  in the U.K.  I have had responses from around the globe: Germany, France, USSR, Scandinavia, China, and many other places.  I believe the world wants to know about the Great Lakes.

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes has been added to the National Clearinghouse of Math and Science, The Eisenhower Regional Consoritia (enc online)  a database for math and science, a resource widely used by schools.

 I  have given talks about the ever-changing Great Lakes at several bookstores, libraries and museums as well as schools.

 

Several public radio stations, and several public television stations have interviewed me and prominently displayed my book cover and URL as the program was aired, or in the case of radio, repeated the URL of my website over the air several times. 

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes, the book, will be listed as a resource in an educational program under development for the Great Lakes in Michigan.  The book is also listed as a resource in a book published by Michigan State University 

 

Because of a great many favorable reviews, the book has been critically acclaimed and re released by Independence Books.  It has also been updated with new material.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is in its fourth printing.  I believe that having a website has helped get the word out and this led to the book being chosen by the publisher to be re released. 

 If we do not work to conserve our life giving freshwater, we may find that the integrity of the lakes is damaged beyond repair.  My website allows people to see satellite views of the Great Lakes as well as places around the Great Lakes of interest: Chicago, Cleveland, Lake Michigan with its singing sands, the Door Peninsula in Canada and the Bruce Peninsula in Canada with their limestone formations, population centers, invasive species, fish, both endemic and planted or accidentally released into the lakes.

 

A website can be a valuable adjunct to a book.    To keep the website fresh, I change it from time to time.  I have published other books, The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and a few essays. It is about wild places in the world and within the self; Sophia's Lost and Found, poems of above and below, and Between Sweetwater and Sand.  Although different genres, these books were  written with a deep appreciation of nature.

 

My poems are published on other websites that appreciate my work, the PW Review, Artvilla, Prairie Poetry, Wise Women’s Web, Betsie’s Literary Page, Creative Women’s Network UK.; Care2  These websites can be accessed around the globe.   In this way I can publish new work until I decide to publish another collection of poetry.  There is a community of poets who support and appreciate one another.

 

There is a community of people who are involved in the work of educating about the environment, and groups whose aim is to make a difference in improving the environment.  I can be in touch with these groups with a few keystrokes.  They let me know what is new and often send good feedback about my website.  Often we trade links.
 

These websites are Environmental Education on the internet (EE link); National Science Teachers Association (nst); Planeta.com; http://www.nalms.org; Teachers.net; Presbyterians for Restoring Nature; www.ecoiq.com; eco-portal; getCited; Book Sense; Care2 Environment Supersite; Michigan Authors and Illustrators Search Page; waterwebring; www.ideacog.net, a clever literary website; Creative Womens Network; A Celebration of Women Writers; Snakeskin; Teacher Talk Earth and Sky; 2River.org, a literary website and Poets House in New York City, www.poetshouse.org.

 

Some of the most ardent conservationists are outdoorsmen and women.  I won an award from Water and Woods for my website.  I contribute articles to websites and sometimes they review my book:  Lakeland Boating has such a website as does Great Lakes Boating; www.great-lakes.org; Fishing With Rod, a website in British Columbia where my book was reviewed; Float Fishing, a website in Toronto.

                                 

I can be in touch with communities in far-flung places with my website.  My book is available to purchase in other countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany, England, and France, Australia through various on-line stores.

The Circle of Life: Salmon

Circuits

Light from a star that died

shines out

from jade green eyes.

A salmon tail fans streambed stones

and dark silt swirls.

Millennia ago a star spurt fire and

now a constellation of eggs

and white milt spiral down

in black water.

Fishbone lattices litter the stream

that speaks of glaciers

and purls.

Frost flowers bloom on the cut bank

while embryos curl in sweet cold sleep below.

___Barbara Spring

An excerpt from my book of poetry and essays: The Wilderness Within.

Sports on the Great Lakes

Fishing from the pier in Grand Haven that marks the Grand River that flows into Lake Michigan is popular as is fishing from boats.  Charters take sports fishers out and often come back with a catch of coho and king salmon, Pacific salmon that were planted in the Great Lakes. Yesterday the governor caught a nice steelhead, a lake run rainbow trout, on a charter.  Sometimes football sized brown trout are caught.  The fish are biting now that cooler water has moved in.

Sailing, surf boarding, kite boarding, and paddle boarding are all popular sports on the Great Lakes.  Some like to fly kites or play volley ball on the beach and some just like to gaze.  Sunsets are spectacular.

The Great Lakes are America's freshwater seas. They support an array of life in and around their waters: people, plants, fish, birds and mammals such as otters, deer, bears, and rarely cougars and wolverines. Many species of life make the Great Lakes ecosystems unique and precious. Water is life.

Recently I took a walk in Ludington, Michigan and saw salmon leaping the dam, Lake Michigan, ducks, geese, and swans.  The colors of autumn are reaching their peak.

Read about Great Lakes ecosystems in The Dynamic Great Lakes

available at bn.com, Amazon.com, and many independent bookstores in Michigan such as Schulers Books and Music, The Bookman, Hostetters, Northern Lights in Duluth, MN and many other fine bookstores.

Fishing on the Great Lakes

Fishing is heating up on Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes are freshwater, however Pacific salmon have been planted and are thriving here. Also steelhead (a lake run rainbow trout) and the native brown trout.

I had a salmon for dinner and it was delicious. I baked it in olive oil and a little butter. The trick is to turn it once and then take it out of the oven right away when the fish flakes easily.

Read about Great Lakes fish in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. This book is available from the publisher at 1-301-695-1707. It is widely available on websites such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com as well as many other stores.