Of Buses and Salmon
I’m a semi-regular bus rider—gone through a couple of bus punch-cards in the past six months or so traveling between Cedar and Traverse City on the BATA. There are lots of things I like about the bus, like being able to chat with friends on the way to work, or being able to just zone out in the seat in the early darkness, since I don’t have to drive. But the other day I discovered a new thing to like about the bus. This good thing has to do with the part of busing that involves walking to the bus station from my office during October.
Why October? Because that’s when the salmon run up the Boardman River and congregate in the fish weir that lies between my office and the bus station. I was a little early for the bus the other day, and I stopped and stared through the fence into the raceway where the fish are trapped. This is probably not an entirely pleasant experience for the fish, which are destined to become cat food—by this point in their lives, the meat is generally not good enough to sell for humans. But it is a cool thing to watch 3-foot long fish swarming in the weir, jumping out of the water or just finning there.
I wasn’t the only one at the weir. There were three young people there, Asian college students, who were equally transfixed by the big fish. They were asking the fish weir attendant all the same questions that were on my mind: How many fish do they harvest in a year (so far this year a few thousand)? What kind of salmon are these (vast majority Chinook, some coho)? How often do they harvest (about once a week, Wednesdays this year)? What happens to the fish (catfood)? And more …
I wondered how many times the attendant must answer this same set of questions, and then as I walked away, I saw a marker board in a window that had all the numbers—precisely how many Chinook (biggest 35.2 pounds this season), how many coho, how many browns.
A big fish run, and that mass congregation is one of those things that gets you contemplating the BIG THINGS, like the mystery of life and species and procreation and the passing of seasons and what cats eat… Which is kind of a cool thing to have happen on the way to the bus.
Jeff Smith is editor of Traverse, Northern Michigan's Magazine.
Why October? Because that’s when the salmon run up the Boardman River and congregate in the fish weir that lies between my office and the bus station. I was a little early for the bus the other day, and I stopped and stared through the fence into the raceway where the fish are trapped. This is probably not an entirely pleasant experience for the fish, which are destined to become cat food—by this point in their lives, the meat is generally not good enough to sell for humans. But it is a cool thing to watch 3-foot long fish swarming in the weir, jumping out of the water or just finning there.
I wasn’t the only one at the weir. There were three young people there, Asian college students, who were equally transfixed by the big fish. They were asking the fish weir attendant all the same questions that were on my mind: How many fish do they harvest in a year (so far this year a few thousand)? What kind of salmon are these (vast majority Chinook, some coho)? How often do they harvest (about once a week, Wednesdays this year)? What happens to the fish (catfood)? And more …
I wondered how many times the attendant must answer this same set of questions, and then as I walked away, I saw a marker board in a window that had all the numbers—precisely how many Chinook (biggest 35.2 pounds this season), how many coho, how many browns.
A big fish run, and that mass congregation is one of those things that gets you contemplating the BIG THINGS, like the mystery of life and species and procreation and the passing of seasons and what cats eat… Which is kind of a cool thing to have happen on the way to the bus.
Jeff Smith is editor of Traverse, Northern Michigan's Magazine.
Tags: bata, bay area transportation aut..., boardman river, chinook, coho, fish weir, michigan, traverse city
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