"mayday" sounds like the French word m'aider, which means "help me"
Mayday mayday mayday. A distress call— which feels extremely on the nose this May. But May should be a time for renewal and flowers— I mean, it is May! I love Spring and the celebration of the renewal of life. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite season because it can be so wet and cold and muddy, but symbolically, it’s my favorite season. I’m just patiently waiting for the forsythia in my yard to be in full bloom, and I like to think of the forsythia as a promise of more life and color to come. No distress. Just flowers. And eels. Or not eels this month.
Lampreys Return to our Rivers
I’ve seen a few articles this Spring about the Nez Perce Tribe working to return lampreys to the Snake River water system in Idaho. And I know this is an Eel Report, and lampreys are not eels, but sometimes we have to talk about what’s not an eel.
Lampreys are not eels. They are slender fish, so maybe they look like eels, but I personally feel like lampreys have more in common with TREMORS and Kevin Bacon than they have to do with eels. Lampreys have round sucker mouths or as the Columbia River InterTribal Fish Commission described it, “jawless sucking disc mouths” (google if you dare) and they latch onto bigger fish and suck out their blood and bodily fluids because lampreys are long little parasite fish. Isn’t that gross?
Another fun lamprey fact is that they have cartilage skeletons like sharks! Lampreys are more closely related to hagfish (also eel shaped but not eels) and sharks than they are to eels. Lampreys, like Salmon, are anadromous fish that migrate to the ocean and then return— but unlike salmon, they don’t always return to their natal streams, they return to places where they think they’ll be successful in spawning. And it’s hard to return to streams when there are a bunch of dams in the way.
THIS IS NOT A LAMPREY REPORT, this is an EEL REPORT, but sometimes when we’re taking a moment to think about the renewal of life and spring, it’s important to think about lampreys (who are not eels), their important role in our river ecosystems, and recognize tribal efforts to return lampreys to tributaries they can’t reach on their own because protecting our ecosystems is also about trying to encourage that renewal of life. Which is my favorite thing about lampreys— that they’re important for the ecological health and life of our river systems, even if they are a little bit of a nightmare Tremors Kevin Bacon fish.
Reading
My reading was a bit all over the place this past month and a half, but I feel like there’s something here for everybody in this most recent round-up of reading.
Crocodile Hungry and Writing
Crocodile Hungry has been out in the world for over three months! I have celebrated by periodically checking my sales which I don’t think is particularly healthy or helpful. And I ordered a ridiculous customized ring— for marketing purposes! Or for my own entertainment! Both of those can be true, I think.
Order Pizza! Anyway, I’m trying to be better about chatting about Crocodile Hungry when I’m in new bookstores and I always feel a little salesman-y about pitching CH to bookstore staff when the book is not in a store I’m visiting. But I am proud of this little book that I made with John Martz and the staff and crew at Tundra Books, so I am working at being better about talking about it like I’m a proud picture book maker.
I have been writing! A little bit. New picture book stories, and jotting down notes and ideas on how to resolve issues on some other manuscripts I’m working on. The progress is small, but it’s there, and that’s what I need. A little bit of progress.
Writing is very much a silver lining business. Writing lives off of hope. And I guess I find myself thinking about things and experiencing the world that we live in and being frustrated and angry, but also looking for hope. In life and in writing. The writing has not gotten any easier, but I am grateful that the act of writing can be hope seeking, in both practice and pursuit. And I guess that’s where I’m at. Looking for a little bit of hope. And lampreys.
Until June,
- Eija Sumner