One of the best parts of the Virtual Tea House is that it is becoming an incubator for new voices.  Out of the recent Nature of Words workshops here in Bend, I met a new-to-be friend, Kathy Powell who lives here in Central Oregon.  This is her first post on the VTH, but I hope it won't be her last.  Please let Kathy know your responses to her story, Salmon Becomes Them.  It is especially important for new bloggers to receive responses, as this lets them know that, indeed, somebody's 'out there'!

Kathy Powell is a yet unpublished creative writer who started her first book at the age of 5. She is the 8th of 10 children in an Irish Catholic “tribe”, so story comes as second nature.  She had an in born connection with animals and nature that led to a Forestry career that led to sensitivity to natural systems and their symbolic meaning.  She studied Oral History with Charles Morrissey and documented the story a West African elder who escaped from the Liberian War which is being developed as creative non fiction. Semi retired now, she is “coming out”.

Salmon Becomes Them

By Kathy Powell

I am chiseled by the plane of your brow. The pattern of your features and line are simple, elemental. Provocative, haunting and familiar like a well loved ghost story told in winter in the musky cedar long house.

 Meat hung low, a fire burning small and mindlessly tended. Children are gathered sleepy and helter skelter on planks one tier up from the fire pits. Aunties and brothers busy over berries and hides but comforted still by knowing word for word the story that will come again from the grandmother’s own personal weaving of the Salmon Boy story. Generations of winter tellings about when he will be swallowed by Salmon and the promise Salmon makes that the people can always sleep well knowing the lost boy will return each Fall and Spring bringing the Salmon for his people to fish and dry. Children are crumpled in the laps of the older ones. The littlest ones are asleep before the Salmon Boy returns. They swim among silver sided Salmon in their dream waters, strong and plentiful enough for their grandchildren’s grandchildren.

Salmon swim up through our lodges, up in the rafters in rows. Salmon swim through the waters dappled with fallen leaves, keeping us safe from snow hunger. Salmon swim again into Spring waters, carrying us with them into silvery summers. Salmon swim and dive in the people’s dreams spawning stories in our bellies to come out of our grandmother’s mouths. The stories call the children back to bellies of the Salmon  in their dreams, bewitching them so that they will always know they are Salmon people and  crave the Salmon to spawn around, through and among them and become them again and again until they become Salmon and Salmon becomes them.