There are Rivers

Snake River, Idaho

There are rivers that flow through deserts. Often a few bushes and scrubby trees grow along the bank, but beyond that it's all sand and cactus. They spring from distant, high, white-topped mountains and then shrink along the way because there are no tributaries in the desert. Some great African rivers never make it through, but simply run out of water among the dunes, while in the USA the Snake and the Columbia; rivers that rise in the Rockies and flow west through rain-shadowed Idaho; eventually make it to the Ocean.

A lot of the life in a regular stream originates from the bank in the form of leaves, grasshoppers and frogs so these desert rivers can seem almost sterile by comparison; but still there are fish.

The wildest western rivers may hold very few fish in summer when times are hostile but, come the fall, dark, sinuous shapes can be found in pools near the sea in Washington and Oregon states. These salmon and steelhead trout have smelled the Rocky Mountain water from out there in the Pacific and are waiting for autumn rains to allow them passage hundreds of miles upstream. It's no stroll in the park, and they won't be coming back.

Snake River in Washington State.

There's almost nothing for them to eat on the journey and anyway, they generally don't feed at all in fresh water; they just keep purposefully nosing up-stream in search of sex. Mating will produce millions of eggs, laid in shallow redds at the river's source in the snow-fields where the water is cold and filled with life-giving oxygen, but no food.

Nourishment for this starved ecosystem, indeed for the whole river, comes largely in the form of spent (i.e. dead) fish and wasted eggs. Bears, birds, fish and insects enjoy the bounty, but leave enough for the small-fry that make their way slowly down to the sea where they mature.

It's a cycle of course, but we only witness half of it. The water itself also goes through a cycle, down the river to the ocean and then back as snow-clouds, but the fish make the journey down and up again only once, and they are the lucky ones!

Unlike the salmon of the Pacific, our Atlantic fish can return to the sea and run our short, steep rivers several times. I'm hoping that I'll get the chance to scramble up to the head-waters again too, but I have to admit to a growing tendency to lie back and go with the flow.

Ho River, Olympic National Park, WA

Fish generally face upstream, even when asleep. In still water they have to swim round and round to keep their gills working and control their position in the water, and so it is with us. When river-people encounter flowing water, we have to stop and look, then we have to decide whether to face up-stream or down. I believe that it's instinctual for us to climb upstream; it certainly is for me but, if that is the case, how did I end up, like an old, fungus-spotted, kelt salmon down the sluggish, Fenland Great Ouse? In fast water, you can keep your head upstream yet still be swept towards the sea, but down here it's hard to tell which way this river is running most of the time.

But, as the lifeguards say, "Thank you for your attention. You may now resume swimming."

Note: The pictures above were taken on our honeymoon many years ago. I didn't do much fishing on that trip.