For those of you who don't know, nature is pretty amazing. Not a little amazing. I am talking capitol letter Amazing.

This year marks the second (or maybe third) year since the 1920's that salmon have returned to our little creek--Mill Creek to spawn.

<a href="http://wallawallalocal.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/return-of-the-spring-chinook-salmon-to-mill-creek-oregon/" target="_blank">My dAd wrote about it last year on his blog</a>. He took pictures. He told me about about it via skype. He was wow-ed by it. When he saw it last year, it was the first time in his life--his whole life--not just his adult life---that he'd seen salmon in the creek.

I didn't get it. Sure I knew it was interesting. I thought it was pretty great that the salmon could make it back to our little creek. There's a lot standing in the way of a single salmon returning to spawn in our creek. The creek it was born in.

There's man (who fishes, who builds damns and who pollutes among other things), there's the distance and there's climate change. Everything seems stacked against these fish.  Still, they manage to get back home to spawn and die.

My dAd was busy telling me how great it was to see the salmon in our creek but I didn't get it.

Nope, I didn't get it until I saw it.

Then I couldn't do anything other than sit on a big rock and watch the salmon in the creek. They are big. Probably 24".