While October holds its breath, the salmon masses, yearning to spawn, yearning for death, pace, undulating and patient, at the blocked river’s mouth, their bodies tasting the freshness of water that waits, still and impotent, on the other side of the summer-structured sand bar.
Tight-skinned orcas arc their bulk through the bulging waves, gorging on swarms of their passion-trapped prey. Sea lions, in their glee-feast, roil the sea surface to white with the commas of their brown, blubbery bodies, emerging with the mute, muscled, mad-flapping flashing bodies tight in their teeth. While overhead, in a cacophony of squawks, cries and insults, a frenzied storm of gulls swoop and twist, fighting for offal.
And, on either side of this madness, this havoc of gluttony, the redwoods and Sitka spruce stand sentinel, towering deep, green, and quiet against the cloudless sky.
Jenny Edwards
This article appears in ‘Powerful’.