Death in the Afternoon

This female sockeye salmon finds the perfect spot in her natale stream to place her eggs.

The end is near for the hundreds, no, thousands of sockeye salmon in the creek that runs into Gastinaeu Sound, Juneau.
There is something exquisitely sad in the watching of this death and life drama play out. The salmon congregate in the stream, flicking their tails as they burrow to create a safe place to drop their millions of eggs. They are spent. They are surely at the end of their cycle for the dorsal fins are ragged, there are cuts and breaks on their mouths. But there is this sense of divine destiny in the air. They have this final mission: return to the stream of your birth – your natal stream – and lay the eggs that will allow the cycle to continue.
They left this precise stream two to five years ago. They found the great Pacific and wandered through the ocean. This came after they had been born in the stream and absorbed their yolk sacs. After emerging from the gravel they fed on tiny aquatic insects. Chinook, coho, and sockeye salmon spend one to three years in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. Pink and chum salmon migrate directly to the ocean after emerging from the gravel. The young salmon are called “smolts”.
Now the sockeye had made their return. Think about the shock to their system as they make the transition from life in the salt water to life in the clear, fresh stream that roars down from the mountains that make the dramatic backdrop to Juneau. They have long since stopped eating. Now they have one task and one task only: spawn.
The eagles and the gulls stand on the banks of the stream and wait and wait and wait. They surely know from where their next meal is coming.
When the salmon has spawned and the eggs have rested in the comparative safety of the stream bed, the male sockeye moves in and fertilizes. Then they die. It is that sad and that simple. They have completed the life cycle. They gasp on the bed of the stream, they lie on the bottom, letting the fresh water pour over them. And they die. Hundreds of thousands of them just die.
It is moving and sobering to watch this scene play out. There is no joy here. But there is a sense of “mission accomplished.”

The night before we left Haines aboard the Matinuska, the oldest ship in the Alaskan ferry system, we were alerted to something on the beach in front of our RV by a tap on our door. A Grizzly Bear was wandering on the beach. He was young, looked to be about 500 pounds in weight and walked and ran at a frightening speed. He'd stand on his hind legs, rising to an intimidating height of six or seven feet. Then he'd run again. Even though the sun was set, I grabbed my camera and tried to photograph this bear. The result is interesting, to me. Because of the long exposure I was lucky enough the create an impression of the bear.
The following morning, we drove to the ferry and there he was again, crossing the road in front of us. He stopped, gave us a look, then trundled on down the bank at the side of the road. This is one of the things that makes this the trip of our lifetimes.