Like Salmon Swimming Upstream

Rhythms that tell time not just in the circle of the year of self as well

I am heading to Italy tomorrow and will be sharing on Instagram, but will come here to do a recap after the trip to share lessons, words, and more that surfaced in the time traveling during harvest season in Tuscany.

Last week I took 15 minutes as I ended my last site visit for the year for work and stopped at the river in Leland on my way back home. I wanted to watch the salmon swim upstream from Lake Michigan. I wanted to smell the scent of them in the lake water as if feeling this one little moment in the season would help my inner clock find a rhythm of where we are at on the wheel of the year once again. I stood there, watching the salmon beating their tale against the rushing river water. They leaped and used immense force to make it up the locks to the river into Lake Leelanau. Using every ounce of their life and strength to reproduce with the hopes of another moment just like this. Ebbing and flowing through the motion of the seasons once again.

Standing there near the water, the tourist traffic faded, the fisherman pulling in the 25 lb salmon for fun and then returning them, and I finally felt I had a moment to breathe after the last 6 months of running a new business, being a parent, and everything else at the speed of light, I felt my feet catch up underneath me once again. If I am honest, I haven’t been immensely happy with how I handled the rhythm of life in this new season of life as a business owner and human. I am still finding a way to hold things gently and realistically. I wouldn’t say I am trying to find balance, just a realism that accounts for what brings me contentment and fulfillment. I have learned over this year that my idea of success as a business owner isn’t what I would have 4 years ago or even maybe a year ago. I have shifted my idea of success to feel there is space to feel my feet beneath me, be fully present and joyful with my kids, and still do something that fulfills me creatively. It is not easy in a world that demands a lot of us financially now and the American immediacy of things being so deeply rutted, but I am choosing to find a way to do it because as I stood there watching the salmon swim, I felt so similar to them this last 6 months. Swimming hard against the stream of life in a season I knew I needed to, but it wasn’t how I wanted it always to be just as they don’t either.

Are there times swimming like this is necessary?! Yes. I do believe moments do ask this us of but I don’t think we are meant to climb the locks at full strength and speed day after day and that is what I want to shift. Some of this I realize comes from simplifying life and finding out what content looks like for me. Not just for the entirety of life. No that is too big of a question, but instead in this season.

This summer, I didn’t do well hearing the season very well. Listening to the signs of the shifts of the season. The tomatos’ ripening. The cantaloupe dripped sugar down my chin. The grass from green to gold in the fields. The goldenrod blooming. By not marking these things in nature, I also was missing the chance to do it in myself. Watching the salmon brought me back to those rhythms as if I finally could feel my lungs filling back with air and my heart beating once again. No longer was it a checklist, but a moment to be in my body, heart, mind, and spirit.

It isn’t like those moments didn’t come through this summer. They did, but there were some times my days were so full I felt all that was holding it together was the tension of it all. One thing breaks that and it all spills over. That’s okay for a moment, but not for the summer.

When I stood there looking at the beating tails of the salmon and their gills opening and closing in the cold fresh water, I took breaths with them. I noted the color of the trees shifting and the difference of being here in July versus now. How I felt. How the land felt here. How the lake looked down the river. It all had shifted in just weeks and in some way, I had too. I had grown. The season had shifted me just like it was shifting the lake and trees now too.

It reminded me how much I need these rhythms of the land and how much I need to listen to them in order to feel at peace in this world. How it isn’t just a fun practice, but it is literally the air in my lungs that keeps me at home in myself. The practice of reading the signs of the land is as important as any other rhythm in my life that keeps me grounded. These rhythms don’t just tell me of the passing season, but of how I may be shifting too. How as a woman my body ebbs and flows through seasons too. My heart shifts. My spirit shifts. My passions shift. Because I have learned to do this in nature I have learned how to do the same in myself.

Though I stood there against a post in the dock amongst other gawkers of this moment's nature, I felt fully present with just my thoughts watching these fish. For a moment the Canadian Geese went overhead as the winds pushed the lake into a stormy dark gray-blue as it only can do in October. I felt now, once again I could hear myself in a way summer never allowed this year and I figured then the way salmon know when to trust their instincts is because of this sort of silence too. So I gave myself the space to let the closure of this season of tension and overflow pass through. To let it fade into the lake down the river. Letting it go knowing I could choose to start anew. A season of too much of both beauty and challenge all holding itself somehow together might fade and I would find a new way to approach the next season with the lessons I learned. Feeling gratitude to both still be swimming and breathing, but to also have let go of all the weight of the last season too.

It never fails to amaze me how much we need nature. How little it needs us, but just how much we need it. It’s hard to choose to slow down to hear its truths and wisdom, but it is these moments, where I slip away from the rhythm for just 15 minutes that have changed how I exist as a human in this world. To spend this time paying attention to the telling of the time of nature and how it allows me to do the same in myself. To feel grace with the seasons that shift in me and provide me the wisdom I need to grow and adapt to the surface levels of the modern world with the depth of knowledge from the natural world.

Heading into this trip to Italy, it feels a lot has closed for the year. My work will be all about design at home and beginning to work on some side projects for a bit again. I plan to spend time hearing myself once again in a way I have missed and I have felt as I have little mental space for writing, which is important to me. I plan to explore the ideas of contentment so I know what matters and truly what doesn’t in life so when seasons of overflow come I can approach them with better grace and deeper breathes. I hope to know when to swim like the salmon and when the time to be slow is too. Learning. Growing. Paying attention.

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From The Margins This Week

A new portion of my newsletter where I share the things that get written from random moments and thoughts. Things from the margins of my life and writing notebook.