In my bones.
There was something wonderful and haunting about witnessing the salmon leaps in the River Esk, in Edzell. I felt simultaneously triumphant and sad for these creatures struggling up the unrelenting river, their black bodies caught in the net of current. Most of them will die within a few days of spawning, after having made a brave journey upstream, returning to the exact place in which they were born. But of course the salmon don’t share these kind of sentimental thoughts. They are only doing what’s in their bones. It doesn’t stop me from wondering, now, back in Edinburgh, if the salmon are there on the Esk, at this exact moment, leaping towards birth & death in the semi-darkness, in that lonely spot, in the clearing with the button moon there, and the bats and the silent mushroom? So many things to think about, when I close my eyes to remember the scenes I’d stood in and was IN. A room, a path, and some moments by a river. I’m on the train shuttling home with the lights of the buildings in the towns blurring in the window-frame. I’m walking home in the encroaching winter air. The salmon leaps…
