Courage Of The Alewives

The water in the bay of Patten’s Pond Stream was calm and shining under the morning sun. The birches on the near shore still showed that grace of line, and across the bay, pine and cedar and fir dotted the slope with dark shades that accentuated the delicacy of spring tints. From shore to shore stretched a white line of waiting gulls. The tide was low and the water gushed out of the mouth of the stream over rocks that were too high for the fish to climb. The leaders of the eager migrants pushed up into the fresh water as far as possible before they paused, edging into easier eddies at the right of the main stream.

The adventure of following the alewives, it seemed, was for the present somewhat whimsically an affair of inaction. Well, if the fish could wait and the gulls could wait, I could. The slow tide came in. The eager alewives began to mount the rapids. The gulls circled up and pounced down. The birds were not lovely to watch while they fed upon the flapping fish they dragged to the shore. Their curdling screams may have voiced a mad joy at the sight of food, or they may have expressed frantic warnings to their fellows to give way to desperate comrades. It was their right to feast. They had waited the turn of the tide and there were so many thousands of fish. But their weird racket cut through my logic to my heart and I went down to the edge of the rocks.

The gulls lifted a wail of anger and disappointment but I refused to give heed. After all, my self-appointed adventure was not with the gulls but with the fish, and while I stood guard near the entrance of the stream the alewives mounted the initial rapids unmolested. When the swift and swirling water threw one of them out of balance the fish would often fight up and over a rock sidewise, perhaps getting a purchase with its fins and the saw-edge of its belly against the irregularities in the surface of the rock. That was a comparatively slow process during which its silver side shone through the shallow water. The normal way for one to mount, however, was to shoot straight up the current, back up and belly down.

This was done in a flash, the back showing under the water a "blue streak" as it went. An alewife does not leap clear of the water to jump the rapids as a salmon or trout does but takes its chances, head into the current. Again and again the migrants were tossed back by the water. Again and again they made undaunted efforts. Even those—and they were very many—whose backs and sides had been torn open by the gulls kept steadfastly to their purpose. Courage and almost inconceivable patience are the terms one naturally applies to their performance.

By: davidbunch

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