T h e   L o n g   J o u r n e y   H o m e

The Sockeye Salmon presents one of the most incredible real life dramas that one could image. Their life begins in a small quiet river somewhere in the Northwestern United States or Western Canada. After the eggs were laid and fertilized by the adults some months earlier the babies hatch out down in the sand and gravel. They don't emerge immediately but live off their egg sack for a few days or weeks, then they emerge to swim the streams and large lakes by the millions.

After a year or two, all at a precise time they swim down stream by the millions. They are now called smolt. The smolt that do not get eaten by predators or killed in the dams along the way, swim to the great oceans and travel thousands of miles north and west for four or more years growing to be 40-60 lb.'s in size--only to return to the mouth of the very same river where they had originated, and all the time following a built-in clock which we know that God placed there when they were just hatchlings. They recognize the terrain and the smell of the water!

Then begins the exhausting trip back up stream. Those salmon that escape the dams, predators and pollution , might travel another 1800 miles to the very stream where they were hatched! There the exhausted adult salmon have changed colors from the gray silver of the ocean colors to the bright red bodies and greenish heads. This is their last journey. After laying eggs and fertilizing them they all die and become part of the nutrients that settle in the stream beds which gives life to the small fry when they hatch. So completes one of nature's great mysteries.

Some day we will find our way to the home God has prepared for us. He died for us so we might live. I'm looking forward to that journey. What about you?

Burney Tompkins

    - Uncle Burney