A Survivalist Reading List for Spawning Salmon (a couple of books to tide them over the rocky spots...)

Plaster Creek is awfully shallow and rocky; a terrible place for a big fish to swim upstream, no matter how blissful the shenanigans that await him. There's a spot under the Madison Bridge that's particularly rough going---the shallows are long and narrow. The rocks are relentless. Lots of fish get hung up under the bridge, the approximate halfway mark between the Big Lake and the Shenanigans.

I suppose I could draw a nice, poetic insight on the struggle of the salmon halfway through* his final journey,** but it's really quite grim to watch. On his side in the bare trickle of water between the rocks, one gill submerged, the other open to the suffocating air. His mouth gasps. His lidless eye stares up at the moon in the early evening sky---is he searching for God, the Creator of Fish?

Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many pleas to you? Will he speak to you soft as words?***

Poor fish. What he needs are some great stories. Some post-survivalist kiddie lit to help him over the worst of the rocks. And since he's a fish, I'm guessing he's not much a one for s/f, fantasy or a thoughtful analysis of the dystopic future heading our way**** so I've stuck to three realistic survivalist tales that are sure to get him out of his own skin for a moment or two---long enough to catch his breath, tense his muscles and flip himself into the deep pool just east of the bridge:

I read this as a nine-year-old, and have never quite given up the dream of living in a tree and training a peregrine. Perhaps when I retire?

Best. Book. Ever.

And here's one from my daughters' generation. Plenty of water in this one for our slightly dried-out fish reader.

And though I'm slightly cheating with this one (it takes place in post-apocalyptic Minneapolis*****), it's a darned great adventure tale. I, for one, have been waiting for the sequel for years.

_____

*Oh so like the plight of the writer, hung up on the Faraglioni smack in the middle muddle of her novel, but it's hard work, that poetic insightfulment business. I will just point out that I have never, in the ten years of watching fish labor up Plaster creek, seen one simply roll over and expire on the rocks. They always manage to keep going, going, going.

**Because our Fish Protagonist, post-shenanigans, is gonna die up there at the head of Plaster Creek and what kind of shenanigans are worth that?

***Job 41: 1-3

****He is a fish, after all.

*****Is this an oxymoron? The Minnesotans are just too darned polite to develop that whole on-a-post-apocalyptic-rampage mindset.