In the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland, a bald eagle sank its talons into a salmon and hauled it skyward. The chinook was huge and its thrashing nearly freed it from the eagles’ grasp so when the majestic bird was high in the air it flung the fish forward and caught it again with both feet. The salmon had whacked the bird mightily and knocked loose one of its feathers but now its fate was sealed so while the eagle flew off with its catch the feather floated down to earth and landed among the rocks and tidal pools on the shore far below.
Embedded in this feather was a scale from the salmon’s tail and that night when the moonlight shone on the feather, the scale turned from one to two, then two to four. The feather also began to change and sinew from new feathers held fast to the scales, and sinew from the scales held fast to the new feathers and in this way a fish began to grow, a fish like no other, a salmon with a perfectly formed eagle’s wing along the ridge of its back. And when the moonlight had gone and the tide had returned to fill the pools the salmon with its wing was lifted free of the rocks and it entered the Johnstone Strait.
Bred from two magnificent travelers, the salmon with its wing took to the Pacific and headed north to the Gulf of Alaska then west to the Bering Sea. It saw icebergs and ice flows and seals and whales, and when it came across the king crab fishermen on their boat coated with sea ice that rolled at impossible angles on the huge swells, the salmon broke free of the boiling surface and extended its wing to catch the gale. It flew effortlessly over the bow in front of the toughest men on earth before disappearing into the depths again. It headed south, avoiding the pods of orca and leaving the cold and ice behind and steering clear of the shipping lanes to cross on the far side of Hawaii. In the doldrums of the Pacific the salmon rested under the tropical sun, its wing extended on the surface like a fan and its body on its side staring up with one eye at the cloudless sky during the day and the Milky Way at night before flipping over and lying on its other side for long periods of time while the current carried it south.
Along the coast of Australia the salmon with the wing entered the crystal clear waters and the sprawling expanse of the Great Barrier Reef. It trailed stingrays and wove through coral gardens before being chased off by a great white shark, escaping death only for the strength of its wing that it stretched high into the air to catch the wind that lifted it free of the water and carried it long distances above the waves and away from danger before diving below the surface again, its wing neatly folded along its back. Up to the Java Trench, the salmon wrapped its wing around itself and angled its feathers outward so it could spin like a corkscrew down, down, down, 25000 feet down into the crushing depths where blackness like no other blackness on earth claimed night and day. Through the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea it hid under the hull of a Chinese carrier as it made its way through the Suez Canal, then rejoiced in the silt of the Nile by scooping it up with its wing and leaving a zigzag trail on the waves as it left the Mediterranean.
Past the coast of Africa and headed south the salmon powered through the doldrums with its wing above the surface creating a bow wave that stretched to the horizon, a monstrous V on the ocean surface that lasted for days. At the base of the African continent the massive swells threw the fish up into the air and with its wing spread tall the salmon floated effortlessly in the up-drafts with the albatross. Off the coast of Antarctica it swam with the penguins past the glaciers and far under the ice where they trapped small fish against the frozen surface while keeping an eye out for leopard seals.
By now more than 4 years had passed and the salmon with the eagle wing had the urge to travel home so it headed north along the coast of South America, leaving behind the frigid waters at the bottom of the world and the massive seas around Cape Horn and the turquoise waters of the South Pacific. Passing on the near side of Hawaii it swam day and night for months until it rounded the northern tip of Vancouver Island and entered the Johnstone Strait. Countless chinook were doing the same and the salmon with the wing became trapped by their bodies and it was impossible to escape the grizzlies that had come for the feast. Thrashing and fighting for space in the river, the salmon with its wing was at a disadvantage and when a huge mouth bit into its back and flung it high through the air toward the shore its wing could not save it this time and it fell with a crack on the sharp rocks of the bank. Within seconds a massive paw with huge claws held it fast and the grizzly’s gaping mouth tore the wing from the salmon’s back and threw it aside broken and shattered. Teeth ripped into the salmon’s body and its blood flowed into the grizzly’s mouth and the pelting ice of the Bering Sea, the tropical heat of the equatorial sun, the fear of the great white shark, the crushing depth of the Java Trench, the silt of the Nile, the albatross and the penguins, all of it ran in the blood from the bear’s huge mouth onto the stones at its feet. And when the bear had completed its feast the skin and bones of the salmon lay scattered like worthless debris on a blanket of blood among the rocks.
And that night when the moon came out and shone down on the skeleton, a scale from the salmon’s uneaten tail changed from one to two, then two to four.
Mental Stretch 