Now - here's the rub. Tonight when my friends come round for supper we will be enjoying smoked salmon sandwiches. There was always something that bothered me about writing a story about salmon. I think I am right in saying that mine is the only story in Gentle Footprints that features a creature many of us eat.
Actually, my story is not so much about salmon at all. It's about people and the futility many of us feel as we struggle against life's roaring waterfalls. It's about the awe we feel when we realise how little we are amongst so many. It's also about the quest for truth, the zest for life which drives us on even when we're not sure why. So the salmon provided a useful metaphor.
Metaphor or not, salmon stocks really are being depleted right now at an alarming rate. Much of nature is under seige from a rampant tide of human expansion. It simply isn't sustainable in the medium, never mind the long term. The lion doesn't care a jot for the zebra he eats. The eagle is indifferent to the rabbit. The difference is that they do it one animal at a time. They have not organised a worldwide industrial killing machine which subordinates whole species to the will of another.
Nor should we. So I shall check that the label on my salmon this evening assures me that it has been sustainably fished or farmed and has not damaged either the environment or the stock levels or health of other salmon. Then I'll enjoy it.
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteAm interesting post and it certainly gives you food for thought. I think you are right about the kiling machine, though there are certain branches of humanity operating the levers.
The expansion is mainly due to the quest for profit by the Western companies. Deforsetation and desertification are the products of land clearance for cash crops not for the use of many in the developing world. The animals lose their habitat as a result.
It is dificult for the ordinary folk like us to always have the time to read labels, but like you, I think it is so important to do so. Though it is a tiny thing, it is one way that we can fight against the machine.
Animals don't have the capacity for rational thought as we supposedly do. Thats why they 'don't give a jot' They eat to survive. We do, on the other hand, have that capacity. Thats what sets us apart from the rest of the species.And that is why we must be responsible and for those less able to defend themselves.
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