the homesteaders daughter: There is no Place Like Home, Part 4

Saturday, July 18, 2009

There is no Place Like Home, Part 4

As hopeless as the contest seems, there is no search involved that we know of. The salmon find their particular, "door" easily, and sail into the estuary they left some years before. In a reverse process they pause long enough to condition themselves to the freshwater and then, as if on some vital time table, thunder onward for the moment of spawning.

In between the estuary and the spawning place a salmon might be confronted with many life threatening barriers. The wrenching, repeated leaps up a dam's, "steps" leaves many torn and battered at the bottom. their particular stream may not even be where it was when they left. It may have been diverted by, or for, a commercial undertaking. (Although this isn't apt to happen much as many individuals and agencies have taken a stand in protecting the fate of the salmon.) Worse yet, the waterway may not be there at all...only a bog of mud where over-logging has been done.

Happily, there are always those fish who win the prize, those who reach the pinnacle of a salmon's life. There time has been spent in adding assets, swirling in deadly beauty and guided by a Creator-driven purpose.

A worn-out mother salmon prepares a gravel nest--called a "redd"--and one or more large males join her and ferilize each group of eggs she deposits. When spawning is finished the gentle water laps a sandbar; the sunset blazes one last time, and the adult Oncorhyncus close their eyes.

In 60 days the eggs will hatch and the story repeats.

There really IS no place like home.

Note* This was written with no claim to a scientific background, however the facts are correct as far as I know them, and the salmon are amazing.
What a Creator we have.

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A Little bit about the grandparents

I consider myself blessed to have known my paternal great-grandparents. Allie and Knapp were a couple straight out of "Little House on the Prairie. They lost a child while still in Kansas and soon after traveled to Washington state where they homesteaded a goodly piece of land and proceeded to build a beautiful farm where the flowers bloomed with abundance to match the fruit of the orchard and the fields of grain.

Their second son, Glenn married Pearl, had a son by her but she gave her life to bring him forth. She died when her baby son, Lloyd, was born. The grandparents raised the boy while Glennn married a young woman named Beulah. They had two boys, but grandson, Lloyd stayed on with them . when he was 8 years-old his father, Glenn was killed by a truck load of logs that rolled off a train and crushed him to pieces.

Their lives seemed one long tragedy, yet love was more alive there than most any other place I have ever been. My father, Lloyd married Maudie Clark and I was their first child, born in our own little house on the Moore property. How could anything so right go so terribly wrong??

By the time I came along the grandparents were in their 80's and life happened. My parents divorced and though I stauyd mainly with my mother I spent a great deal of time with my dad and Grandpa and Grandma on the farm...or what was left of it by this time.

There never was running water in the, "big" house or an inside toilet and only limited electricity.

On most days Grandma sat in the parlor in her rocker in front of a standing radio and two windows where the honeysuckle smiled- in during the summer months; the Bible at her side.

The kitchen floor sank in a little and the oil-cloth on the big square table
was worn from the meals that had been served there. A kerosene lamp stood there also and somehow it always smelled like apple pie.

My grandma was just under 5 feet tall, with grey hair pulled back in a bun and little tiny feet. She could not see well and wore thick glasses, maybe not a pretty picture to anyone else but a matchless queen to me, and whenever she asked me to go to her closet and bring a certain box to her side I knew I was about to see wonderous things or to hear grand stories

My family's history was in those boxes and over the few years that I had my dear great-grandparents I learned who I was. Grandpa had his tales to tell also. One such story was the one about a horse kicking him in the chest and he DID seems to have a hoof print in that spot.

Grandpa chewed...tobacco that is... and watching him bite off a chunk of the rich chocolate colored stuff was very tempting. My mother told me that when she was expecting me she was so overcome with temptation that she snuck a piece of the tobacco when Grandpa wasn't looking and had her chew...and spent some time with her head hanging over the dandelion field behind the house.

Grandpa Knapp was an unusual fella. Once a year the grandparents house was scrubbed inside with calsomine, a white paint-like substance. He had to walk to the paint store which was a good 5 miles one way. His walks were going to become a problem later on after Grandma was gone but that will have to come later.