the only constant

Age. My gray hairs have increased. I'm feeling it in my lower back. I am getting senile. I can hear a ringing in my ears. I'm old. No, wait. I'm not old. I'm only 31. Wait, I am not yet 31. I am almost 31. Almost. I mean, I am writing this now, as a probable stand alone Part 1, because I have a feeling that Wednesday night (as well as Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights) I will be unable to type. Maybe because my fingers will be broken, from bad bets, debts, love, or rocking out. Maybe just because I will be too drunk, stoned or both to work the keyboard. But hell, it's my birthday.
My 31st birthday.
To be honest, I don't much care. I am hardly aware that I am turning 31, except that here it is my favorite time of year again, and I begin to wonder, for the first time, do I enjoy autumn so much because I am a Libra, because it is my time, because I was born during this time of year? Or is it because of the change that is in the air during this season? Or maybe I am fooling myself, and I have never really had a strong preference for autumn before moving to Mendocino, where the season means harvest, and harvest means bounty in so many senses. And, well, it starts to rain again. Which gets me back to change. I guess, in truth, that's probably why I like autumn so much. Change is in the air again.
In New Hampshire, where I lived for a bit, the leaves change. Actually, I got an email today from a close friend who spent yet another summer in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire. She sent photos and a short description of a hike up to Franconia Ridge, where it had snowed for the first time this year. And it was no small dusting for a first snow. There was snow, it was almost heavy on the leaves in places. I remember having a birthday in the New Hampshire mountains, and smiling to think that it was snowing near me, that it was practically winter as I celebrated with my friends.
Here in Northern California, it does not precipitate from approximately May until October. You get the occasional freak rain in June, and well, it rains a tiny bit in September sometims. But last week was the first rain that actually made the ground wet here. And there is more to come this week. Autumn here in Mendo means lots of things. The biggest might be that farmers everywhere are harvesting their crops - big buds of outdoor marijuana are coming down to be trimmed and sold, or smoked green - grapes all over the vineyards are going into vats to be stomped, filtered, sometimes sulfated, and put away to ferment into the regions award winning wines. Farmers markets are still going strong. Every home gardeners tomatoes are bursting off the vine. And there's a big one I am excited about this year that I haven't meditated on too much before - the salmon are begining to run in the creeks. Not yet, but as soon as the ground gets a bit saturated with rain, and the river levels begin to rise again, these fish will return to the place of their birth, the fresh water rivers through the north coast, to spawn and (mostly) to die. Sure the steelhead will often live to spawn another day. But the king, the coho, the pink, they will make that single, ridiculous, strenuous, blindly determined trip up the rivers from whch they were born, over logs, small dams, past predators, through pools and riffles, fighting current the whole way, to carry on their own tradition.
I am thinking more about this journey this year than I ever have before. Because as of tomorrow I am leaving my current job as a camp caretaker, sacrificing rent free housing and a guaranteed year round paycheck, to monitor the salmon's journey. I am taking a job as a fisheries techician, wading creeks to count, measure and identify salmon redds this winter. A redd is a nest that the female salmon builds and lays her eggs in. It is made up of cleaned small cobble pebbles in the midst of a quickly flowing area of freshwater stream. She travels upstream quite a ways from the ocean of her adulthood to the spot where she will build this redd, then immediately sets to work forming the nest with her tail. It is an amazing story that I won't get into right now. Really, I probably don't have the credentials to tell you the story of a salmon's journey. Maybe no human actually does. But, hell, we should try at least. And I will, one day. In the meantime, know that these fish are born against heavy odds in freshwater creek habitats on the West coast and a bit inland. They spend the first year of their life growing up in the small pools and riffles of inland creeks, feeding on aquatic macroinvertebrates and their adult forms, growing big enough to migrate downstream where they change to adult smolts, head out into the ocean, and spend the next few years migrating around the entire Pacific. At some point they return to the exact creek from which they were born, spawn, and die.
I have gotten a job counting their carcasses. Tagging the dead fish for species identification. Finding the redds they create to lay their eggs in, measuring them, identifying the species of fish that created them, recording it all for the Department of Fish and Game (I like that fish come first in that name). I will be working 4 ten hour days a week. Wearing a dry suit for most of that time. Do you know what a dry suit is? I didn't either. I have still never worn one. It is a goretex suit, I believe, that keeps you completely warm and dry while immersed in cold water, unlike a wetsuit, which keeps you warm and wet, and is much harder to put on and take off. I will be following creeks, climbing over logs, searching for evidence of salmon who have spawned. Tagging their corpses, measuring their redds. I will be keeping an eye out for wild edible mushrooms, too. Most of all, I will be seeing the drainages of Mendocino county come to life with the water brought on by winter. I will get to see these rivers go from calmly flowing creeks to swollen masses of moving water, silt, branches and energy. This is one of those jobs where during the interview they ask if you have experience working in inclimate weather conditions. I do. Funny thing is, I think I am actually looking forward to the rainy part of it. But ask me again in the spring.
I guess the whole point is, it's autumn. It's time for change. Leaves change (even here a bit), rain begins, fungus sprout, rivers begin to swell, fish begin to migrate. I seek difference in my life. Okay, no, really, I do that all the time. Maybe I am more of a Sagittarius than a Libra. Nah, here I am writing a blog. I seek creative outlet. The reason I desire change in my life so often is that I am indecisive. Or who knows. Really maybe I am just a dreamer like my Mom and my bro have said. I acknowledge that I have this habit - I have no idea where I get it - of not being able to stick to one path for too long. In the most literal sense I am the type of hiker that hates having to return by the same route. I am always seeking a new path, though, in a both literal and figurative sense, I am always glad to arrive home again.
Happy autumn. Be the change you want to see in the world. Or in your life.