Yesterday was World Fish Migration Day, an opportunity to acknowledge one of the most remarkable annual occurrences in the natural world. Here in Canada fish such as salmon and trout and smelt spend part of the year in large bodies of water, only to return to the streams and rivers from whence they came.
Here in Ontario people flock to spots where the salmon run upstream in the Fall although, sadly, the original Atlantic salmon are long gone and introduced species such as Chinook salmon are what they are seeing. When we lived in Bowmanville, on the shore of Lake Ontario, the salmon and trout runs were impressive.
This got me thinking about what has happened globally with the pandemic. 2020 was supposed to be the Year of Pilgrimage for Christian humans and there events planned for cathedrals in the United Kingdom to welcome visitors. There are annual pilgrimages such as the Camino in Spain and the Haj to Mecca. All this changed drastically as a result of the pandemic.
Despite this, the "pilgrimages" of fish and other species continue. The migrations of salmon, and caribou, and wildebeests and the heavenly host of birds and butterflies may be curtailed by climate change and habitat loss, yet the creatures are still on the move.
Surely our human inclination toward meaningful journeys which we call pilgrimages are connected in some way to the manner in which so many of God's creatures migrate. We sense the spiritual value of doing but the physical movement of migration and pilgrimage is necessary and a vital aspect of the experience.
Rainbow Trout at Bowmanville Creek Fish Ladder
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