I love you Will Dowd. i’ve written so many drafts of the salmon story and now you’ve fulfilled my wish to do a better version. Your work is gorgeous. 🌱🌿🫶🏼
Beautiful prose as always, Will. Wishing you saline and healing tonight under that full (pink?) moon, which we will almost assuredly see from San Diego.
Thank you for giving precious energy to lunar writing for us. My fave bit : “where soggy clouds are bobbing around the night sky like sofa cushions in a flooded basement.” 👏
Every full moon, I do a deep dive on a specific theme with sensory recommendations. This time I chose to make it all about water… and wrote about hoe being in water feels like coming home… without knowing it was the salmon moon!
One teeny little correction if I may? When the hen lays her eggs in the nest, they are not fertilized until the male who is hovering nearby, releases sperm over the eggs.
I love imagining what that must feel like. The magnetic urgency of direction and determination, almost as if their muscular bodies are being pulled by an invisible mother.
Another gorgeous image-full piece. Thank you Will. For a short time I lived on a salmon spawning river and watched them manically throwing themselves up stream.
You have deluges back east, and we in the PAC NW have a drought. No measurable rain for weeks now. The river salmon are struggling.
The call to return home is strong for me too, and pulls me July and August each year. The wallpaper on my iPad shows the summer cottage walkway to the lake, down large stones that have been in place for a hundred years, laid by my grandfather and great Uncle. It’s been 8 years since I walked that path, and it still beckons me.
I hope you are comforted and held dearly in your childhood bedroom.
I knew nothing about salmon growing up in the South, but I've lived in Montana and Idaho for 21 years now and have learned so much about how important they are to the health of the whole region, their role in Native communities, the devastation that the dams have caused, and how many expensive and weird ideas we've had to replenish the population and transport (hatchery and wild) salmon through the hot reservoirs and over dams. Have you ever read about Redfish Lake in Stanley, Idaho? It was called that because so many sockeye salmon returned there to spawn that the lake was literally red. It's still a beautiful place, but now it's just blue water.
I am hopeful I will see the return of salmon runs in my lifetime as some of the dams come down; while I have also enjoyed watching fish counts online, I wish we didn't need the hatcheries to begin with. I was camping in the mountains near Boise last weekend, and the waxing moon was so bright, I needed my sunshade driving back on Monday night. Last night, I had to squint to take in the full moon's intensity. I like to think that's the salmon showing us their strength.
Even dehydrated, you continue as a thoughtful reservoir of information and insight! Wonderful to be with you again at the actual Full Moon.
Towards healing and wholeness -- always for you (and especially for the MBTA, lol).
Thank you. I love your moon stories, your stories of the moon we all share.
I love you Will Dowd. i’ve written so many drafts of the salmon story and now you’ve fulfilled my wish to do a better version. Your work is gorgeous. 🌱🌿🫶🏼
Beautiful prose as always, Will. Wishing you saline and healing tonight under that full (pink?) moon, which we will almost assuredly see from San Diego.
Salmon Diego
Love these words - so poetical. Thank you. Did you also do the illustration, which is also gorgeous?
I also want to know this!
Thank you for giving precious energy to lunar writing for us. My fave bit : “where soggy clouds are bobbing around the night sky like sofa cushions in a flooded basement.” 👏
In the UK we call it The Buck Moon when deer lose their antlers.
Every full moon, I do a deep dive on a specific theme with sensory recommendations. This time I chose to make it all about water… and wrote about hoe being in water feels like coming home… without knowing it was the salmon moon!
Please do not ask me to jump that high and then secretly film it 😂 I couldn’t bear the futility
One teeny little correction if I may? When the hen lays her eggs in the nest, they are not fertilized until the male who is hovering nearby, releases sperm over the eggs.
Your writing is beautiful and very soothing.
Thank you!
Heartfelt thanks! I count your dispatches as a blessing.
I love imagining what that must feel like. The magnetic urgency of direction and determination, almost as if their muscular bodies are being pulled by an invisible mother.
This was beautiful. And interesting! I'm so glad I opened my email and read this. Thank you!
Another gorgeous image-full piece. Thank you Will. For a short time I lived on a salmon spawning river and watched them manically throwing themselves up stream.
You have deluges back east, and we in the PAC NW have a drought. No measurable rain for weeks now. The river salmon are struggling.
The call to return home is strong for me too, and pulls me July and August each year. The wallpaper on my iPad shows the summer cottage walkway to the lake, down large stones that have been in place for a hundred years, laid by my grandfather and great Uncle. It’s been 8 years since I walked that path, and it still beckons me.
I hope you are comforted and held dearly in your childhood bedroom.
I knew nothing about salmon growing up in the South, but I've lived in Montana and Idaho for 21 years now and have learned so much about how important they are to the health of the whole region, their role in Native communities, the devastation that the dams have caused, and how many expensive and weird ideas we've had to replenish the population and transport (hatchery and wild) salmon through the hot reservoirs and over dams. Have you ever read about Redfish Lake in Stanley, Idaho? It was called that because so many sockeye salmon returned there to spawn that the lake was literally red. It's still a beautiful place, but now it's just blue water.
I am hopeful I will see the return of salmon runs in my lifetime as some of the dams come down; while I have also enjoyed watching fish counts online, I wish we didn't need the hatcheries to begin with. I was camping in the mountains near Boise last weekend, and the waxing moon was so bright, I needed my sunshade driving back on Monday night. Last night, I had to squint to take in the full moon's intensity. I like to think that's the salmon showing us their strength.
Thank you for this article! As usual, informative and beautiful!