Lost River

nonfiction

The prose poem and photo, “Lost River,” was an attempt to illustrate the fact that Idaho, Oregon and Washington’s wild salmon have been driven to the brink of extinction because of a wheat-growing industry that will make no concessions to salmon in what was once the greatest salmon and steelhead producing river in the world. The atrocities committed against these keystone species mirror the atrocities committed again the scores of native tribes for whom wild salmon were their Eucharist, greatest source of food, and greatest source of wealth, leaving nothing to replace those great gifts. I remain struck by the kindness of the wheat farmer who let us use his beautiful fresh-harvested fields in solidarity with fisher folk. The four lower Snake River dams are especially egregious because Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson has created a plan that will allow wild salmon and wheat farmers to coexist in potential abundance, but the Trump Administration prefers salmon’s potential extinction for no stated reason. I think of Christ serving his followers both loaves and fishes and shake my head in bafflement. “Lost River” is a visual and poetic expression of that bafflement. The poem was published in the anthology Best American Spiritual Writing, an honor that didn’t help salmon, but does help me face the generations who are losing this unbelievable manifestation of the Genesis blessings without shame.

Lost River

I dreamed the people who fished the river never knew want, seldom knew confusion, & with the salmon’s self-sacrifice to guide them they could always find love. I dreamed I obeyed the river so gratefully the name of every rapid, fall & riffle engraved itself upon on my tongue, & the salmon came back to us again & again, & I never doubted they would bless my family’s table forever.

I dreamed Big & Little Dalles & Methow & Priest Rapids & Lodgepole & Entiat Rapids. I dreamed Coulee Bend & Kettle Falls & beautiful Celilo. I dreamed Chalwash Chilni & Picture Rocks Bay & Spanish Castle & Victoria & Beacon Rocks. I dreamed Black Canyon & Deschutes & Klickitat Canyons & Rocky Reach & Ribbon Cliff. I dreamed I fished by the peach groves of the place called Penawawa, drunk on the river’s sweetness within the fruit.

I dreamed I fell asleep to the sound of water, & when I woke a cloud had enveloped the minds of the ruling pharoahs, & they had attacked the Great River as if its song & flow were curses, clogging its flow with hundreds of dams, & all that I knew was submerged.

I dreamed the salmon young lost strength & direction in the slackwaters, couldn’t reach the sea, & when they no longer brought the ocean back to us we grew as lost as they. I dreamed my people stood shoulder to shoulder in casinos the way we’d once stood by the river, our fists full of quarters, our minds full of broken hope & smoke.

I dreamed I asked why the salmon had to die & the pharoahs told me, “So wheat can ride the slackwater in barges.” I dreamed I tried to reason, telling them of wheat shipped by railroad & pointing out the riverside tracks, & they laughed at me & marched off to conduct business hard to distinguish from war.

I dreamed I led the last salmon people out into the wheat fields, & in a golden light we launched our dories, & we went fishing in the golden stubble. I dreamed I cast the Spey of a Nez Perce named Levi, & the beauty of hidden salmon gleamed in field & sky, & our fishing became prayer. But still the pharoahs ruled the water. I dreamed the one who reads even lost rivers then said, “It is finished,” & the last salmon floated by us as a cloud above us.

I dream I am an old man, & Levi & the farmer whose fields we sailed sit with me at Penawawa beside a river finally freed. I dream we hold rods in one hand, sweet peaches in the other, & our lines run true as prayer into the shine. But whether the salmon come, whether they bring the lost ocean back to us, my dreams, like the river, refuse to say. ~

David James Duncan