Post #3742499

“Or perhaps it's better to think of this seasonal reciprocity as a kind of breathing, as an exhalation of millions of young salmon smolts down from the tree—thick mountains and meadows and then out into that roiling cosmos of currents and tidal flows to mingle with zooplankton and seals and squids; and then the great in-breath, the drawing in of living nourishment from the sea into river mouths and estuaries, inhaling the salmon up the rivers into streams, and from there into the branching becks, rills, and runnels that filter into the green forests, the living lungs of this biosphere. Or is it the broad-bellied ocean that is breathing, sucking these finned nutrients down from the shaded slopes, luring them over rocks and through rapids and hydroelectric dam spillways—drawing them past bustling cities and factories, through intersecting gradients of toxic effluvia that sting their mouths and strafe their exposed membranes—on out into the heaving whirl of the sea's innards, circulating this glimmering nourishment within itself before exhaling it back, a long sighing breath, up into the wooded valleys?” […] 5/