The Annual Goal Of Alewives

An old willow, leafless still, stood beside the rapids a little way beyond the bridge. How many springs had its bare branches reached over the migrant alewife parents as they went up towards the ponds, and how many summers had its leaves shaded the migrant alewife young as they came down towards the sea? The tree looked so large and lasting. An alewife looked so small and fleeting. Yet the life of the willow was a mere hour in the stretch of years during which alewives had been coming and going on their annual way. It was, indeed, a place for solitude. Leafless birches stood at the brook's brim, trunks tall, and slender, and white against the dark evergreens, and their reflections shimmering in the water. The dark fins of many alewives showed in quiet places and at the falls the fish were nosing into the rapids.

Their attempts, rebuffs, repeated efforts, ultimate successes, stirred my imagination and admiration as they had at the initial rapids at the mouth of the stream. I found myself again praising their courage and patient endeavor. And again, as the fish sped up into the strong tumbling water, I was reminded that not courage but something more steadfast led these migrants irresistibly on their way. Each fish, as it conquered the rapids, seemed glad of body. It was, this season, a fortnight's journey for the fasting alewives from the sea to the millpond, a distance of about two miles. The mill, with its cellar of gushing torrents and bewildering detours, held many handicaps and not a few tragedies; but most of the fish fought through and around and then up a sluiceway into the Mill Pond, the first in a chain of three lakes.

Once in placid water, would the fish stay? Was not one pool as good as another? Evidently not, to journeying alewives. They must be moving again, after a rest. Perhaps the sound of water roaring at the dam challenged them to yet another victory. Perhaps the feel of the incoming current lured them to even better waters for their errand. At any rate on to the dam they swam and there again made difficult passage. They could not know that they now had their ultimate triumph over the wayward stream, and that the last serious obstacle in their fresh water race was behind them. But I knew it and felt strangely relieved.

In the woods not far from the shore of that Upper Pond was a brown bent stem of a last year's braken fern. Under the fern there was a brown nest lined with the dry spills of white pine. In the nest were the greenblue eggs, which betokened that a pair of hermit thrushes had reached their migration's end. The migrations of the finny wanderers had also come to an end; and in due time their eggs would be entrusted to that watery cradle which is the annual goal of alewives, passing up stream from sea to pond.

By: davidbunch

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