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“Whatever the river says,” wrote William Stafford, “That’s what I say.” Immersed in the river of being; how can it be otherwise for us? Braiding, threading, merging; the many streams of our lives join, eventually, in the great sea.

I dream of rivers. In the fall, Chinook, coho and steelhead school in the Pacific just off the mouths of the Northwest rivers, waiting for the seasonal rains to flood and break through summer sand berms covering many entrances. Instinct tells them to make their way upstream to lay and fertilize eggs, and, for the salmon, to die.

Somebody once asked Zhaozhou, “What does a newborn baby think about?”
Zhaozhou said, “Well, it’s kind of like tossing a ball into a rushing stream.”

A monk asked of another teacher what that meant, and they said,
“Moment by moment, nonstop flow.”

I dream of rivers. Some nights ago my father came, something he had not done for a while since his passing seventeen years ago. There he was across a darkened room, walking toward me, holding out a large box of about two dozen fishing flies as an offering, keeping his gaze downward. I took the box and thanked him.

Later that night I found myself fly fishing in a large river. The clear, cool water swirled around my waist as I made long, arcing casts of the fly liner. Back cast, forward cast, back cast, and a final forward shooting cast with the line snapping tight a couple feet above the water, then softly drifting to the surface.

The wet fly sank down a foot or two. I couldn’t see anything but I could feel a tugging on the line. My fishing partner exclaimed, “You’ve got one on!” I said I wasn’t sure. It’s a practice, this catch and release.

Gaia dreams of rivers. We worry about Gaia but I think she mostly worries about us. In Vancouver, Canada, a couple of weeks ago I visited the Museum of Anthropology and its magnificent display of First Nations art: towering Haida totem poles, great Salish sea canoes, ornate basketry and beadwork. This, the wealthiest culture north of the Aztec in Mexico, was known as the “salmon culture” based on the abundance of this rich fish.

The story of the Northwest salmon parallels that of the original people: a ninety-five percent collapse of the population, overfishing, loss of habitat, illness.

Yet there is some dream of the return of the “salmon people,” as the fish were once called. Coho populations on the Oregon coast have recovered to levels not seen in sixty-five years. In 2024, the first year that four dams were removed from the Klamath River, nearly 10,000 fish returned to 420 miles of recovered spawning grounds. Last year, Chinook were seen in the Russian River and Sonoma Creek watersheds for the first time in decades. We dream of rivers. The salmon, too, they dream of rivers.

—Jon Joseph

Art: “Spawning Colors,” Far North Nature Prints

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Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community