Friday My Town Shoot-Out: Construction

This week's My Town Shoot-Out was suggested by the clever, talented, and consummate fisherman, Gordon, from St. Augustine, Florida

construction: a complex entity constructed of many parts

Since the recession hit, there is almost no building in Corvallis. But in the clear little rivers of the Coast Range there is construction of a different sort: the exquisitely beautiful ending-and-beginning of the salmon life cycle. The life of this amazing creature is definitely a "complex entity constructed of many parts."

Spawning chinook salmon in Big Elk Creek, west of Corvallis. We watched them on Monday, when I took this picture.

This time of year the fall chinook have come home to Oregon from their years in the Pacific Ocean. They have swum all the way from here to Japan and back again. They are busy constructing their pebble nests, laying and fertilizing eggs, sweeping away silt with their strong tails, defending their ground, and eventually fading into the cold, swift waters forever. The spring chinook, the coho, and the steelhead will do the same thing, sharing the streams but arriving at different times, a perfectly constructed and miraculous system.

If you have 3 minutes 37 seconds, please watch this literal journey to heaven: it opens with a (long) contemplative look at the surface of the nearby Alsea river, rippling with fish. It ends with a salmon just finishing its life cycle: oh to drift away like this, how beautiful.

Video by Don Whitaker, music by Anton Raijekov