The Salmon River
It had been raining heavily all night. The river is high, its usually crystal clear waters now brown and muggy. The forest of alder trees that holds the shores on both sides is flooded. The water 
masses are shooting downstream, eager to reach the ocean and come to rest there. I pondered the cycle of the water evaporating from the ocean, forming clouds, coming down as rain, flowing down creeks and rivers in order to find completion of the cycle in the sea. I woke up from my musings as right in front of me a big chum salmon emerged out of the river, its dark back arching out and back in the water again. Here in a back eddy they were standing, the salmon who came also to complete a cycle. They start upstream where they hatch from the eggs, as salmon fries they make their way downstream to the ocean, go on their mysterious migration through the North Pacific in order to return as mature fish to their origin. Now they are here again, their cycle just going in the opposite direction to the cycle of the water. Both are coming home, the salmon to the river, the river to the ocean. The salmon’s life culminates in the spawning, an orgy of color, of sex, of aggression – and then it is done. They die, their bodies feeding the aquatic life of the river that will feed their offspring who then continue the cycle.
My 97 year old aunty completed her circle yesterday. She had been a rock in all the turbulences of life. Whatever happened in my life, she had been there. She even had visited me in the years I was living on the Blood Reserve in Alberta. She had been to sweat lodges with me. She had seen my life. Gratitude filled my heart, sadness overflowed my eyes. The day before a friend of my cowboy times in Alberta had phoned: “My dad rode his last circle the other day.” We were quiet for a while thinking of the joy and the hardship of the old rancher’s life on the prairies. Our old people, like the salmon they gave everything for us. In the end they died and left the torch of life for us to carry on, to take good care that the flame will burn bright and clear until we will pass it on. Is it death, or is it simply a rejuvenation of life? I remembered Goethe who once said: Death is the trick of nature to sustain life.
So I watched the salmon fighting their way upstream ready to die and I saw the river rushing downstream ready to die into the ocean. I took a deep breath and I felt that all there is, is the cycles, the movement, the everlasting change in life. I smiled; with tears in my eyes.
Do you have areas in your life in which the free flow of energies is stuck in small repetitive circles, in pattern of the past? Send me an email. The salmon and the river and thousands of remedies from nature are waiting to help you.
I give thanks for your aunty and all like her who are able to witness our lives. Warm hugs to you as you travel through all the feelings connected with her presence and her completion. Thanks for witnessing so many people’s lives yourself Roland.
Thank you Joanne. Say hi to the prairies of Alberta from me.
Thanks Roland for the deep ponderings about life and death. Blessings on your aunties passing to her next adventures.
Thank you, Sohlea. The more we complete of the smaller cycles in our lives, the easier the completion of the bigger cycle will be. May we all use the opportunities that life offers so abundantly, to bring things to a good closure.
Thank you for your warm wisdom in action, dear Roland!
So many blessings for your full circles, and for your dear aunty’s journey!
So well said Roland!
You’re writing is like poetry. Bringing in that sacred creative energy to expression something in form. Thank you.
You’re question was: Do you have areas in your life which the free flow of energies is stuck in small repetitive circles, in pattern of the past?
To that, I just wanted to share and connect, I have been working on integrating light energy into the root of the physical body. Deep deep ancestral cellular healing. Yesterday I went to the herbal store in Vancouver and got a combination of coastal root plants to diet. So I am excited about the next month or so integrating them. I have worked with many native healers from North America and Mexico, and have been exposed to sacred medicine ceremonies. It’s opened me up more deeply to the compression of energy within the body, in the cells, and do do deep emotional work to release toxic energy. I have also learned on my spiritual walk to trust your dreams because it gives you the proper spiritual message about your situation and such. I want to share recently one of my dreams that inspired me to work more deeply with the root energy, and to find the roots plants that I did. In my dream I was sitting in a chair. Beyond me was the whole universe, stars and planets. My spirit wanted to release itself into the universe and lift into the Light, however, I was stuck in the chair. I could not get up energetically, but my spirit wanted to. This dream made complete sense to me in regards to the energy channels that are open in my body, to experience the unity with the universe, and the ones that are still holding cellular memories that need cleansing, the root being stuck in the chair. Hope this story inspires others to pay attention to their dreams. If we pray about them, we always get the right understanding.
Thank you, Filomena, for sharing your dream and your a bit of journey with us. Dreams are treasures. They often provide clarity and guidance.