The leaves are falling and the coho and pinks are making their run. Thousands of giant salmon, pouring up the river mouths, their bodies wracked by parasites, wounds and decay, their once expansive lives wittled down to a point.
Watching from the shore, you can't help rooting for certain individuals. A tiny coho, surrounded by massive humpbacked pinks, waiting it's turn to leap. An enormous defeated pink, too exhausted to make the leap required of it, slowly floundering in water too shallow for it to breathe, only inches from deeper water.
Overhead the crows, ravens, gulls and eagles are watching too, and the black bear wanders the shore in the early morning, heaving it's breakfast from the water.
The same bear that, yesterday morning, sauntered onto our property and ripped the landlord's apple tree out of the ground in search of dessert.
"Shoulda picked them apples sooner." says neighbour J.