STORIES

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Returning to the Exact Spot — Day 1 / Friday, October 6

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Community: Thompson

Before Scott and I get on the road, we make one more stop: Pacific Streamkeepers Federation HQ, or Zo Ann’s house. We need a tent. In case it rains (It won’t!). When we arrive, Zo Ann tells us that these Sockeye left four years ago are coming back to spawn in the exact spot they were born; she tells us each salmon knows the exact gravel they were born in.

Coming back to the Adams River has a great deal of meaning for me. Sorrento is almost home. I grew up in Revelstoke and every year of the dominant run (and sometimes other years) my family would drive here and meet my auntie Mavis. Although she now lives in Toronto, she was living in Sorrento then and she is still my most favorite un-blood relative. Apart from the salmon, my brother and I both have one vivid memory of our fall days with Mavis: her peppermint green whale of a car. We remember how she’d boss that car all over town.

Finally Scott and I are on the road at 1:20 p.m. and traffic is lighter than I expected but there are too many people in a hurry to get where they were going. We put in the Citizen Cope CD and drive along the Fraser then the Coldwater then the Thompson rivers. Outside the leaves are changing into gorgeous hues of red, yellow and orange.

We arrive at the park at 6:20 p.m. and it is quiet. Only a few families making a late evening stop on their way somewhere. We check out the gift shop and the DFO tent and where we will set up tomorrow. Then we head to the river. We can hear and smell them before we see any brilliant red Sockeye. In a spawning channel off to the right, the male and females are pairing off and dancing underwater.

tail in nose

circle

nose in tail

circle

drift

circle

drift

Some salmon are doing this dance in the undercut of the bank, where it is a deep pool. We follow the sounds of the main channel and come to the viewing platform where across on the gravel bar, seagulls squawk and fight over the mounds of dead, spawned-out carcasses. Below we can see so many salmon! And because of my Streamkeeper training (thanks Dianne and Zo Ann) I notice what an amazing site this is—a text book case of perfect habitat: woody debris, clear, cold water, deep pools as well as riffles, lots of overhanging trees which means good bug life, and so many side channels!

We head for our car and under a full moon we drive to our cabin with the vanishing light behind us. We pass Sorrento and I think of Mavis because for me, this is the exact spot this love affair of salmon began.