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Karen Hollis | Oct 13, 2024 Pentecost 21
Psalm 1 – Christine Robinson
Happy are they who know good and do good.
Their love for the good nourishes them continually.
They are like trees planted near the river,
whose roots go deep and wide.
They thrive, bear fruit in season, and
weather drought without wilting.
Those who are not so grounded
will blow around like dry leaves in the wind.
Root yourself in Good, and live.
Ken Newman:
Salmon are members of a unique family of fishes that are born into fresh water, migrate to the salty ocean and then return to the fresh water to breed. They are a gift to the fresh water ecosystem, which is naturally nutrient deficient. Salmon go out to the ocean, acquire nutrients and deposit them into the fresh water ecosystem – they are known as the nutrient express. When the salmon swim up towards the headwaters of a mountain stream to spawn, they will often be met by bears, otters, eagles and wolves. In a day, a large and dominant bear might catch 30 salmon a day, typically dragging the carcasses into the forest to consume them. Likewise with the other predators.The uneaten parts and also the bear scat will decomposes and sink into the forest soils where it will nourish the trees. It has been shown that three quarters of the nitrogen in the tree rings comes from the flesh of the salmon. During the years of large salmon spawning runs the tree rings will be wider than in leaner years. Of course some of the trees may date back a thousand years or more giving us a long term salmon run records which could be correlated with climate change, fishing practices, etc.
Being an uninvited visitor, a colonizer, I can only surmise but the faithfulness of the salmon departing in uncountable numbers downstream to the ocean and returning three or more years later to nourish the west coast aboriginal people must have been a profound influence on their culture and spiritual world to say nothing of their actual survival.
In June 2016 Rev. Keltie was invited to assist in the welcoming of the first salmon run nce before (in 1984) since the 1940s.This year in April the elders of the Quw’utsun Nation did likewise along the Koksilah River which flows into Cowichan Bay. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks of the ritual performed by the Nesdhensney Tribe in Oregon who would set light to the grasslands on Cascade Head, a 1400 foot promontory overlooking the ocean to act as beacon to guide the salmon home.
A question of you. How many of you, driving along the Dyke Road have seen sticks sticking out of the mud when the tide is low. Before 1946 most of those sticks were invisible. It was only after the 7.3 magnitude earthquake under Forbidden Plateau that the stakes became visible probably due to sediment liquefaction or sediment shifting. Most of the stakesare actually on the other shore of the estuary west of the Royston wrecks. Nobody knew what they were until one of the Mary Everson, one of the K’ómoks nation’s elders was asked and she mentioned that her grandmother told her they were the remains of fish traps. The fish traps were constructed with portable woven wooden trap panels perhaps 6 metres long held in place by the stakes which were originally much taller. The K’omoks archaeologists recently found the remains of one of these woven panels in the silt and have painstakingly restored it. It has been C-14 dated to approximately 600 years old. It is now on display in the Deep Bay Marine Field Station of Vancouver Island University until December.
The stakes have been studied extensively. According to C-14 dating they range in age from 1,300 to 100 years old. This oldest date is well before the Vikings started ravishing Europe! Over 13000 stakes were mapped and connected to
over 300 different traps. It is suggested the total number of stakes would have been 150,000 to 200,000.
Approximately 800 years ago, the trap design changed around the same time as a shift to cooler temperatures (the Little Ice Age) suggesting the predominant fish species changed from herring to salmon. However during the intervening years, the design and dimensions of the traps stayed remarkably constant.
In the area of Mack Laing Park is the remains of probably the largest Pentlach village in the valley. Its shell middens, the places where the residents dumped sea shells and other garbage have been dated between 500 BCE and 1800AD.
Even without a written history, it is clear that the ocean and in particular the estuary was an almost limitless source of food which the indigenous population managed sustainably for thousands of years. And yet us colonizers, us uninvited guests have managed to decimate this amazing treasure by:
Overfishing
Dam construction for flood control and power generation.
Logging practices that take trees close the river’s edge meaning that after heavy rain the banks of the rivers wash away releasing silt into the water suffocating the fish
Pollution, urban, agricultural and industrial
As an example, the Tsolum River in the late 1940s, had fish runs of up to 200,000 pink salmon, 15,000 coho, 11,000 chum and 3,500 steelhead. In 1964, a copper mine was opened on Mount Washington. 2 years later it went bankrupt. Acid mine drainage from the mine- waste flowed into the Tsolum River which in the late 1940s, had fish runs of up to 200,000 pink salmon, 15,000 coho, 11,000 chum and 3,500 steelhead. In 1982 the Headquarters Creek hatchery released 2.5 million pink fry into the Tsolum River and none returned (not asingle one)
Is there any hope to undo what we have done? For the Tsolum River, in 2009, $4.5M restoration started. By 2013, roughly 61,800 pink salmon returned to spawn, the largest return since the 1950s. In 2015, 129,000 pinks came back to the river — a record return since fish counts began in 1953.
In the early 1900s, two dams were constructed (108 feet and 210 feet high) on the 45-mile long Elwha River in Washington state. Prior to construction an estimated 400,000 adult salmon returned to spawn each year. After construction the length of river available for spawning was only 5 miles with a salmon count of ~4,000 in 2011. The dams were removed between 2011and 2014. Salmon started returning within months of the dam removal.
Scientists on the Elwah river started researching the habitat to create baseline before the dam came down. They took data from various species and 10 years after the dam’s removal, they were excited to find a high level of ocean nutrients in the animal and plant life. Not only did they find a high level of nutrients, but certain bird species were consistently having 2 clutches of eggs per season, instead of one. A researcher said they could see the nutrients in the feathers, as well – the animals just looked healthier. The salmon literally nourish the ecosystem so it can thrive.
Work has now started on one of the largest dam removal projects ever undertaken, the removal of the four dams on the Klamath River which flows through Oregon and California.
I will now ask the Rev. Karen if she would conclude this reflection by exploring the connection between the salmon-bearing rivers in the Pacific Northwest with the metaphor of the rivers nourishing the trees beside it as used by the writer of Psalm 1
Rev. Karen:
After learning about rivers and salmon from Ken, I invite us to hear the psalm once again. Notice any ways in which these words rest on you differently now.
Happy are they who know good and do good.
Their love for the good nourishes them continually.
They are like trees planted near the river,
whose roots go deep and wide.
They thrive, bear fruit in season, and
weather drought without wilting.
Those who are not so grounded
will blow around like dry leaves in the wind.
Root yourself in Good, and live.
Learning about salmon intensifies this scripture for me. I always assumed Psalm 1 was teaching that trees planted near rivers thrive because of the water . . . and that’s true . . . but evidently that’s not the whole story. I was watching a documentary about the Elwah river restoration and learned that there aren’t a lot of nutrients in rivers, which is why salmon have to go to the ocean to grow.
Any one of us, including salmon and trees, can survive for a long time on water alone, but in order to thrive, we need nutrients. Trees planted by the river thrive because they are part of an integrated system of sharing. Everyone does their part. The river carries sediment down to create spawning ground for salmon; salmon swim up to spawn; animals like otters, eagles, bears, wolves eat the salmon; the remains break down in the forest and feed the soil, trees and underbrush, which then feed the deer and other forest animals.
While the “good” in Psalm 1 was originally meant to refer to scripture or Jewish Law, this morning I invite us to broaden our view of scripture to include, not just the Bible, which is known by many as the second book of scripture, but also the first book of scripture, which is God’s creation.
What is the “good” in the first book of scripture? I imagine the first place our minds go is to God . . . still I wonder if we can be more specific. If, as Richard Rohr says, God’s creation is God’s own self poured out, what does the manifestation of God look like on a large scale? What comes to mind for me is the turning wheel of interconnection. Here in the valley, it would include the innerworkings of our ecosystem to which the salmon are central. The salmon may swim upstream, but the turning cycle of interconnection also needs the bear, the soil, sun, rain and seasons . . . we might understand the good as the turning of the whole thing together.
And I wonder, what does it look like for us to read the first book of scripture? What does it look like to study it and learn from it and see ourselves as part of it?
What if when we go for walks, we wonder to our surroundings: how are we connected? Maple tree, how are we connected? Seagull, how are we connected? We might thank the wind for circulating oxygen, breathe in, and exhale a breath for the trees. We might give thanks for the rain that soaks the land in the fall, the sun who gives us warmth, the shade of the trees from the sun, the wind that falls leaves, which become part of the soil for our gardens. I find that when I open myself to the questions and tune into the world around me, and the connections that emerge are endless. If you’re like me, it makes a difference to know the ways in which we’re connected to the rest of creation. It provides rooting and grounding.
It is good to be a part of this this incredible book of life. It is good to be sustained by our interconnected sharing . . . and it is good to be grounded and rooted in God’s creation. When I remember this, I just feel gratitude.