Edited by Dava Sobel The Squamscott River grew lazy in early summer— muskrat rose and dove heron swept the air and landed and hemlocks that had survived another century’s practice of harvesting their bark were thriving. Some suffered beaver girdles and the predation by woolly adelgids but still the pileated woodpeckers found what they required in the snags. This is how it was for us—pulling threads of hope out of the air as if we had the skill to weave them back into webs. We surprised ourselves when it worked— so much needed to be undone. And I promise you that as paltry as our efforts may seem to you—no. I won’t justify our failures. The story of the alewives’ return—that’s what I wanted you to know because it helps to think of desires that last for centuries without being satisfied. How far inland did the alewives come, I wondered, the dam removed after three hundred years and in the first year then they came in a rush. Locals could hear the gulls gathered in the estuary in their joy and the alewives swam and swam to the reaches of their ancestors—eleven miles and three hundred years of appetite for place their genes remembered and knew how to find. The Abenaki offered a welcome back ceremony. And fishers gathered—human cat and bird to feast and the memory that had been thwarted for centuries became a fertile flow.
The Squamscott River grew lazy in early summer— muskrat rose and dove heron swept the air and landed and hemlocks that had survived another century’s practice of harvesting their bark were thriving. Some suffered beaver girdles and the predation by woolly adelgids but still the pileated woodpeckers found what they required in the snags. This is how it was for us—pulling threads of hope out of the air as if we had the skill to weave them back into webs. We surprised ourselves when it worked— so much needed to be undone. And I promise you that as paltry as our efforts may seem to you—no. I won’t justify our failures. The story of the alewives’ return—that’s what I wanted you to know because it helps to think of desires that last for centuries without being satisfied. How far inland did the alewives come, I wondered, the dam removed after three hundred years and in the first year then they came in a rush. Locals could hear the gulls gathered in the estuary in their joy and the alewives swam and swam to the reaches of their ancestors—eleven miles and three hundred years of appetite for place their genes remembered and knew how to find. The Abenaki offered a welcome back ceremony. And fishers gathered—human cat and bird to feast and the memory that had been thwarted for centuries became a fertile flow.
