Amber Jo Hatt - Fish out of Water

 

 

A real Pacific Northwest adventure. That's what I promised my friends, Nick and Sarah, on their last day in Portland. I didn't tell them how I'm notorious for having almost killed several friends in the name of a real Pacific Northwest adventure, [audience laughter] like the time that I was a whitewater rafting guide down the Upper Clackamas. 

 

As my trusting friends and I approached our first of several Class 4 rapids, my advice, as a guide, was to duck and center all your weight in the middle of the boat. [audience laughter] The time that search and rescue found my friend and I just one bush away from the cliff edge of the Pacific Ocean. Totally dark, one bush away from death. 

 

I didn't tell Nick and Sarah this, because well, they're total city slickers from Philadelphia, Philly. And up until today, my friend, Nick, his idea of a real Pacific Northwest adventure was the cannabis festival in Seattle. [audience laughter] That's all he really cared about. I actually drug him to the river with the promise that he can just be the stoned guy in the back seat of the car. [audience laughter] He was very, very excited to smoke marijuana legally in the state of Washington. I think that's why he flew out. [audience laughter] 

 

So, they had never been swimming in a river before. They apparently had only been to country club swimming pools. And so, I was going to keep things pretty simple. Good thing, because my friend, Sarah, who is gorgeous, she arrives ready to swim in a thong bikini. And neither one of them thought to bring shoes, knowing that we were going to hike a few miles up this river. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I'm not too worried about my past with the northwest, because I've been to this river a couple times already this summer. So, we're going to take it easy. We start off by, at first, stumbling and then just completely sliding down this embankment, landing pretty close to the river actually. [audience laughter] So, things were not exactly as I remembered funny, that they don't say this, but they should, you can't judge a river by how it looked two months earlier out here. [audience laughter] Things have a way of changing. 

 

So, the water level in the river in July was amazing. I swam through the river. There were fish jumping out of the water. You could catch a fish with your hands, I swear. There's this amazing cave. And that was my plan. So, we're going and we're going. The water is totally shallow. They're barefoot, so it makes it even harder to get going, and they keep falling. They're not seeing the forest for all the rocks that they're falling over constantly. [audience laughter] 

 

I just keep moving them forward. “It's going to better. Up ahead, up ahead, up ahead, it's going to better,” because, as you know, rivers always get better towards their end late in August. [audience laughter] Push them forward, push them forward, push them forward. And then, finally, Sarah in the thong bikini is very cold. She has goose bumps on her arms. There's no more sun hitting the water, because we've taken too long. Sun's moving west, I believe. [audience laughter] 

 

Yes, west. I look, you know, can I get out? So, I leave Nick and Sarah, and I go, because I have my shoes, and I go look to see if I can somehow hoist my chubby body up four stories of embankment to get to the road. At last, I cannot. I get back in the water to join them. [audience laughter] 

 

As I near closer to them, something doesn't look quite right, because Sarah, who always has a nasty look on her face, has a more nasty look on her. She looks sick almost. Nick is looking at me with his arms in the air like, “What are you going to do now, huh? What are you going to do now? What are you going to do now?” I'm like, “What? What?” I'm trying to get to them, and I'm slipping and I'm falling. I fall and I land on this dead salmon that's like the size of my arm. [audience laughter] Its eyes are looking at me even though it's dead. Its eyes looking at me like, “I've heard about your Pacific Northwest adventures, Amber.” [audience laughter] I'm like, [surprised squeal]

 

I'm looking at this fish, and then Nick said-- I can hear Nick. I'm close enough now and he says to me like, “Dead fish.” And then, I look and I ground myself, and I'm present now, and I look out and what looked before like a football field of just shallow rocks jetting out of shallow water, it's actually a sea just like this of dead fish the size of my arm, or your arm, if you're taller. They're all completely dead. 200 dead fish lined up like this. 

 

This is the Washougal River in Washington. The water has an inch of slick vitamin E oil on the top of it. [audience laughter] The stench of a few hundred rotting salmon smells like rotting fish. [audience laughter] It is nasty. The rocks are very slippery on the rock bed of the river. And trying to get going is like a cartoon character just slipping and sliding. And then,. I look at the fish and I'm like, “We are so screwed. The sun's setting. There's all these dead fish.” I look at this fish and I'm like, “What? This is foreboding, really, for my Pacific Northwest adventure.” 

 

I look at the fish and I hear the fish's story. We are layering our story of death onto these fish. And then, I look at my friends and I'm like, “These fish aren't dead. These fish are warriors. These fish were born here, they went out to ocean and they came back surviving all odds. They climbed on top of other fish, they made it through the Columbia River, they made it up the Dugan Falls.” We couldn't climb Dugan Falls. “They made it through the fisheries. They had some sex, they laid some eggs and they died. These fish are heroes. And the smell is calling the bears to come get them, so they can be pooped out of the bear and provide nitrogen to the soil. It's the circle of life. Let's go.” [audience laughter] 

 

My friends internalized the power of story to motivate us. We took on the will of the salmon, and we forged ahead and we made it in time, made it back to the city and we feasted on salmon at the radio room for dinner. Thank you.