In Between Hope and End: A Reflection on the Salmon Run

Flip (2021)

I stood by the riverbank, camera in hand, when I noticed one salmon lying belly-up near the shore — still, pale, and finished. Its body was curved gently, as if it had only just stopped moving. The rest of the river was alive with motion: silver flashes slicing through the current, fins slapping against the rocks. But this one had reached its end. I lifted my lens, not out of awe, but because something about the image held me — the way it captured a moment that lived in between life and death, movement and stillness, purpose and exhaustion.

Every fall, Pacific salmon return from the ocean to the rivers they were born in, in a final, urgent act of instinct — to spawn. This journey, called the salmon run, happens across British Columbia and parts of Ontario, and it’s both beautiful and brutal. They swim upstream, sometimes leaping over rocks or dams, navigating kilometers of cold, fast-moving water. Many don’t make it. And for those who do, their bodies break down soon after reproduction. It’s a life driven by a single, final purpose. After that, they die.

But that’s also how new life begins. The river fills with the next generation of eggs, fertilized and left tucked under gravel, waiting for the next cycle. The adult bodies — the ones that have died — become nutrients for the ecosystem: for the forest, for the bears, for the birds. It’s not just an end. It’s also a return, a reintegration. A transformation.

What struck me most that day wasn’t just the harshness or the beauty of nature — it was how absolute the salmon’s decision was. There’s no halfway in this journey. They can’t just hesitate halfway upstream. To hesitate is to perish. To move forward is also to perish — but with meaning.

I think of this sometimes when standing at the edge of hard decisions. When we hesitate too long in our “in between” — waiting for the perfect sign, the perfect condition, the fear to pass — we risk losing direction altogether. And yet, when we commit to the path — even when it’s hard, exhausting, or filled with unknowns — we might discover that what’s waiting on the other side isn’t just an end, but renewal. Maybe even hope.

The in-between may not be a place that stay the same forever. It’s a place we pass through. What we choose to face within it might shape what comes next — not just for us, but for everything that follows.