Last night, I walked past the little stream often overrun with trash. I saw a man down there, with a headlamp and a net. I knew what he was looking for (smelt). I asked him if he was seeing many.

“A few,” he said.

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I stood there.

“I have to really wait for them,” he said.

“Good luck,” I said, and carried on to my destination: a dam, or rather, a phenomenon that occurs there—elvers roping. While elvers are strong enough to swim all the way to Maine from the Sargasso Sea, they are not strong enough to make it over the waterfalls themselves, nor is the fishway at this dam fully functional. Elvers can and do, however, create passageways over these obstructions to reach critical upstream habitat by forming themselves into a rope made of their own collective bodies.1

No offense but I can’t stand being around waterfalls. The sound of the water is too much for me. I’m an empath. (This is a joke.)2 This sentiment becomes especially apparent when doing things like approaching a waterfall alone in darkness. The way that churning water drowns out all other sounds makes me nervous.3

I wanted to announce myself to any riverside critters without drawing human attention by shouting so I clapped in short bursts of three—a rhythm of greeting I learned from living in northern Cameroon that I didn’t know had stuck until last night. Nothing made itself known.

I set to work seeking the phenomena a local elver fisherman had told me it was time to see. I perceived the dripping cracks. I saw no eels. A pococurante bullfrog hopped away from me, stirring up silt. It would be a shame to fall in the river. I returned to the still water further below the dam, away from the din.

Soon, the night air will be thick with mosquitoes and such activities will therefore be banned but for now, there are no biting insects, and crouching by the river was peaceful. As the moon let go of the water, the sound of the grass and plants gently slapping the mud and rocks increased.

Staring into water like this is like staring into outer space. The elvers are still there, though reduced in number.4 Watching the migrating elvers at this point in the season is like watching shooting stars during a meteor shower but you’re looking down instead of up. When they’re really running, it’s like watching fireworks. During the height of their migration, if you are standing on a rock on an incoming tide, you might find elvers being drawn to your boots, which, if you are really still, may mean that you are a good place to hide, or, that you are a safety feature, and you may find this to be pleasing or perhaps horrifying.

My fascination with eels cracks me up, as their movement is not dissimilar to snakes and, as I have written elsewhere I have evolved to be instinctually terrified of snakes.5 The American eel tends to have an average of 107 vertebrae. We humans (speak for yourself) have 33. This aside is just to say that to take advantage of currents and make your way up the cracks in dams, the more vertebrae you have, the better. (Though extrapolating from this study, eel personality—and length—could be the greatest indicators of their climbing abilities, up fish ladders, anyway.) I will keep attempting to observe elvers climbing over dams and report back if I am successful.

I’m hesitant to say too much more about elvers here because I have high hopes and dare I say, not unreasonable dreams, and publishers tend to say they don’t want to publish words if the words have already appeared elsewhere, even here, but if you want to get together and talk eels or whatever is on your mind, I would like that.

I do, however, want to formalize my love of elvers, so I did that here.

Important note: I would be doing far less eel-investigating were it not for filmmaker Eli Kao whom I’m grateful to have as a collaborator, co-conspirator, and partner-in-eels.

Housekeeping

Maine Audubon is my newest client. “That’s nice, Michele.”

Torchlight (the creative media studio I’m a part of) will be announcing a summer workshop/class schedule soon. Sign up for our mailing list here.

New Work in the World

Nope.

Currents

In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf

My sister has been working so hard and so long on a beautiful and difficult book. The announcement about it came out in Publishers Marketplace on the same day she was hospitalized for another surgery (she is going to be okay).

(I may have won spelling bees in the past but I can’t believe that this is how we spell this flower.)

Donut Seam

I get obsessed with things. Last month it was Adrianne Lenker. This month, Lenker wins again. I was talking with my dad about the future, his hopes and dreams. He mentioned, offhandedly, something about rafting down the Colorado River before the water disappears. There is an adjacent lyric in Lenker’s song “Donut Seam.” He’s now down in Georgia with my sister and family and I keep meaning to send him the song, so here you go, Dad.

I am not saying nothing else matters but let’s take care of ourselves, treat ourselves and each other with great tenderness, not turn away, and not give up hope while we’re at it.

Love,

Michele

michele.christle@gmail.com
michelechristle.com

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