The Traveling Salmon: A Cautionary Tale

If you’re going to bury the dead, bury them deep enough to keep the wildlife away and build a cairn for good measure. 

In this case, the dearly departed was a freshly caught salmon I picked up at the local food bank. This thing was special because it didn’t come out of a freezer at Walmart. 

Someone went out to a river and caught the thing. Engaged with it, prayed over it, and possibly thanked the Creators (and the salmon itself) for it’s use as a foodstuff. 

Here was this beautiful, holy, fresh salmon; handed to me with practically no middle-people involved. I was excited to cook it; to partake of all the nutrients the earth had to give via a fish. We are all made up of the elements of the very earth, after all. We continually circulate them amongst ourselves, the animals, and the soil beneath our feet. Same ones – over and over and over again. 

I didn’t cook the fish in time.  It went bad. I felt bad. I felt I had violated a sacrosanct process begun at the moment the fish closed its mouth on the bait. I felt compelled to repent for my sins by giving the salmon a buriel commensurate with it’s lofty position on the food chain. 

Instead of hucking it into the dumpster up the alley, I decided to bury it.

That night found me with a shovel and a rotten fish in a garden in the middle of a suburban neighborhood.  

At such times as this – digging a hole in the garden next to my house just short of the witching hour with lightening flashing overhead, I have moments of awareness and I ask myself: what the fuck am I doing?  But back to the salmon. 

It was gone the next morning. 

The three-inch deep grave provided little to no obstacle for the local population of raccoons; but the fish didn’t disappear. 

It was sighted several times around the neighborhood over about a week’s time before I last spotted what was left of it limply draped over a tree branch in the woods behind my house.

Then it was gone. 

I gave my thanks for the fish that kept on giving, even in death, distributing its goodness amongst the local wildlife, after which they, in turn, will pay it forward and so it goes on; the cycle of life and death in a suburban neighborhood in a moderately sized city in the county of King in the State of Washington.

Amen.