Swimming together

In the early 1990s Tom Reimchen, a biologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, was doing field research in the forests around Bag Harbor.

Finding half eaten salmon carcasses under giant spruce, cedar and hemlock trees he experienced a moment of clarity, a breathtaking vision of a cycle connecting ocean, river and forest.

Each summer along remote streams Reimchen spent hundreds of hours watching black bears catching salmon that had returned from the ocean to spawn in the waters where they were born.   

His data showed that British Columbia’s 100,000 bears were dragging 60 million kilograms of nutrient-rich salmon into forests each year and that this was accounting for half of all nitrogen found in trees growing along salmon runs. 

Reimchen’s revelation taught us just how interconnected our world is, he revealed that ocean and land were joined by threads we had been blind to – that forests were more than just trees, that salmon more than fish.

Each year on Winter Solstice we too gather like returning salmon around bonfires, bringing with us in the darkness our hopes to spawn in the coming year.

Inside the old train carriage at CERES on the longest night – we line up to write our intentions on two slips of paper – on one slip something we’d like to grow in and on the other a challenge we’d like to leave behind. 

Our hopes for the year ahead will be planted in CERES’ fertile soil, while into the bonfire we feed the hard things from the year gone past.

These hopeful intentions, these fragile thoughts we wish to see grow and take form in the coming months, while the painful lessons we release we hope will strengthen us to face the next challenge.

And while we make our intentions alone, each year we come together in increasing numbers to entwine them in earth and flame.

On the CERES village green as the bonfire burns a silence falls over the boisterous crowd. 

Looking at the glowing faces around the blaze on a night we should be rugged up at home, it’s clear to everyone that at the beginning of this new cycle we are swimming downstream to the sea together.

Have a great week

Chris