Better Call Sal!

Call me Sal. I was born in Michigan. Since my youth, I have dwelt in many locations in the Great Lakes region. I spend much of my time in the states surrounding Lake Michigan: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. On occasion, I have found myself in Ontario. I have always had a certain wanderlust, constantly on the move. However, each summer I am inevitably lured to Door County. I love it there. It is my happy place. I am not exactly sure what draws me to the county. Perhaps it is the ideal temperatures, the great food, the waters or those I meet there. It surely is not the people. It is people that have brought me only anxiety and pain. As I come to the end of my days, I feel obliged to relate a tale of terror, struggle and ultimate redemption that transpired in, of all places, the paradise that is Door County.

Please indulge me and allow me to start at the beginning. My beginning. I had a very normal, albeit eventful youth. My earliest memories are of cavorting with several thousand of my siblings in the cool, clear waters of a Michigan stream. We would dart in and out of logs, play hide and seek among the rocks and explore the various side channels of the current. I was a happy fry. There were dangers, of course. Occasionally, several classmates from my school would just disappear, snatched up by some unknown force from above or swallowed by a hungry, and larger, neighbor. Then there was my dark past. I learned that my parents died right after I was born. I did not witness their demise, of course, but it still haunts me to this day. I don’t complain about my early years though. Later in life, I discovered that many of my kind spent their youth in bleak, stainless-steel enclosures, their only food being dry, lifeless pellets. Tragically, even when these captives were released into the wild, they were mutilated by having their adipose appendage cut off, forever branding them as “not natural”. I still have my adipose fin. I was one of the lucky ones. 

Eventually I left that familiar stream, as smolts are wont to do, and found myself on my own in the open waters of Lake Michigan. And I was hungry. I was always hungry. Fortunately, the vast waters of the lake held many morsels that I found particularly tasty. I have to say, you have not lived until you have devoured a mouthful of fresh alewife under the shimmering light of the rising sun. And don’t get me started on smelt. They are a rare treat these days. The food was plentiful and I grew quickly in those first years. I soon attained jack status among my peers. 

I had to work hard for my food in Lake Michigan. I was constantly on the move, looking for more and better food. This is what brought me to Door County that fateful summer. I was well into the second half of my life and pretty full of myself. I was fast and powerful. Nothing that swam could challenge me. I was the “king” of the lake.  There were massive shoals of alewife off the Northern Door coast, and I intended to eat my fill. Late one afternoon as the mid-summer sun began to set behind the jagged, tree studded shoreline, I was cruising the lake between Cana Island and Baileys Harbor, one of my favorite feeding grounds. I was swimming well below the lake surface where the water temperature was cool and comfortable. The water nearer the surface was just too warm for me. I was feeling a bit peckish as I had been on the move all day. Just then, the flash of food caught my eye. It seemed to be moving oddly though, perhaps an alewife struggling in the cold water. This should be easy pickings. I rocketed toward the unsuspecting meal, mouth agape, and crushed it in my toothy jaws. 

Pain shot through my body. The pain emanated from the alewife I had just devoured. But why? I had eaten thousands of these soft bodied animals, but never felt this pain before. Then I felt the jerk. A powerful resistance causing me to lunge forward, pulling me to the surface. This was not normal. I had to get out of there. With every ounce of strength I could manage, I swam away from the direction of the pull. I could still feel the resistance, but I was winning this tug-of-war. Surely, I would soon be far away from whatever was assaulting me. I had to exhaust a tremendous amount of energy to counter the inexecrable force pulling me back. I was tiring. Eventually, I felt myself succumbing to the pull. Expending whatever bursts of vitality I could muster, I attempted to overcome the pull but I was methodically, almost mechanically, being drawn upward. Upward toward the air and certain suffocation. I burst to the surface. The delicacy of the air was startling, and I thrashed about wildly. Just as I was about to make one last desperate attempt to release myself from the pull, I suddenly found myself enmeshed in a weed-like tangle. I could not free myself as I was hurled up into the air, crashing onto a flat unyielding surface. I was no longer in my familiar water.  

I attempted to focus my eyes on the mirage-like objects dancing about me. They moved as if they were alive, but they were huge. They dwarfed me, the king of the lake. They seemed to have thick appendages coming out of them in every direction. I saw no adipose fin. They were not natural. One of them moved toward to me and grasped me firmly. The object which was the source of my pain was quickly wrench from my jaws. I seemed to be raised up into the air. The air! I immediately realized that I was suffocating. If I could not get back into my water, I was going to die. I panicked and with one final burst of whatever strength remained in my body, I convulsed and was suddenly free from the grasp of this other-worldly being. I seemed to be tumbling uncontrollably through the gossamer thin air. What was happening? Was I going to die? Then without warning, pure bliss! I was shrouded in a mantle of life-giving water. Lake Michigan had saved me. I could feel my blood becoming rich again reinvigorating my body. With a powerful thrust of my tail, I propelled myself deeper into lake. Away from the surface. Away from the chaos. Away from death.  Away from the people.

Fortunately, I have had no further encounters with people. After recovering from the ordeal, I resumed my life, basking in the rich bounty of the lake. I grew larger. I still spent much of my summers near Door County. However, now I was much more wary of my surroundings. More careful of what I chose to eat. Fool me once……. 

Then a change occurred in me. Something was welling deep inside causing me to be drawn back to my Michigan birthplace. I was many miles away for there, but somehow I just knew which direction to travel to get back there. I became obsessed, driven to return to the clear running water of that stream in Michigan. My body was changing as well. My skin grew darker, my muscles thicker. My movements became ponderous, yet I continued to force myself forward. As I swam ever closer, the pull became stronger, almost overwhelming. I was following an invisible thread back to my origins. 

As I neared the mouth of the stream of my birth, I became aware of being surrounded by others like me. Through much of my life, I did not pay much attention to others of my species. I merely looked on them as food or competitors for food. Now I felt the need to interact with them. Some caused me to anger. I attacked them and drove them away from me. Others, however, I was drawn to. I now began to understand. 

My entire life to this point was a continuous cycle of eating and moving, moving and eating. I did not know why or what it was all for. Now I knew. I would end my life as my parents had. My destiny was to produce the next generation of Chinook Salmon to populate the lake. Once that quest was completed, I would die, my tissue being recycled back into the natural system that had sustained me all my life. I would die knowing that soon a new vanguard would be swimming to the lake to their destiny.  

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Sal