Somewhere We Were Never Meant To Be
Allegory? Or just mammals, fish, and pigs?
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In 1985, a forty-foot, eighty-thousand-pound whale named Humphrey swam under the Golden Gate Bridge into the bay, up the Sacramento River past the Rio Vista Bridge, to Shag Slough, west of Sutter Island. Nearly beached in the shallow slough, sixty-nine miles from the Pacific Ocean, Humphrey the Whale became the most famous humpback in the history of the species. “It’s a federal whale,” said a government official overseeing the historical rescue.
The Feds spent some money and hired a musician as part of their rescue plan. In order to entice him back to open waters, Bernie Krause, a bio-acoustician, played recordings of the feeding sounds of Humphrey’s kin. Krause, former member of the folk group The Weavers, got Humphrey turned around. Prior to working with the whale, Krause’s credits included Country Joe and the Fish, George Harrison of The Beatles, The Monkees, and Jane Goodall, naturally.
People lined the banks of the Sacramento River for miles to cheer on the homeward-bound Humphrey. Inspired by the familiar sounds of family and the prospect of dinner, he had turned around and was returning to open water.
How do you explain such a skip in the universal flow of things? Whaleologists suggested a sickness, perhaps parasites on the brain, or an inner ear infection. The fact is, whale or human can find themselves on the wrong side of the river, stuck in the shallows. Yet somehow, lost mammals large and small are shown cosmic favor to turn and return. As the eminent theologian J. I. Packer once explained rhetorically to Andi and me, “It’s all of Grace then, isn’t it?” Grace is a river, too.
The Sacramento River in Northern California is a long 447 miles, flowing south from upstate near Mount Shasta in the Cascades. The river acts like a person who has lived long enough to know when to reserve speech. No great, world-changing utterances, just a steady flow of who and what she is. The Sacramento can be brooding but never menacing. That is, unless you dive to the bottom and sup with the giants: white sturgeon capable of living well over a hundred years, growing to eight to twelve feet and a thousand pounds or more.
I’ve spent many a fishing hour out on the Sacramento with my dad and one of two uncles—either Uncle Ron the Barber or Uncle Walt the Engineer. We were normally on the hunt for stripers or salmon. If you’re using sardines for bait, you can hook a sturgeon now and again.
If you really want a sturgeon, though, you should go sturgeon fishing, which means you should be prepared to actually catch one. Most fishermen are not. We certainly never were.
You know you’ve hooked a big sturgeon when it peels the line off your reel. If your line doesn’t break (it usually does), then you let the prehistoric monster pull you up and down the river for about an hour. I say an hour because most people can hold a dream in their hearts for at least an hour. Usually, after an hour, with no sign of the fish ever rising from the bottom, you lose your dream to a consigned realism. The hopeful thought of landing the largest freshwater fish in North America degenerates into “I don’t know, man, why don’t we just cut the line?” Every bone and muscle aches and you’re sweating like a stuck pig, but it’s not all loss. You’ve got yourself a good story, and stories are good medicine.
One day, my dad, Uncle Walt the Engineer, and I were fishing for stripers out on the Sacramento when we heard an awful wailing. At a distance, echoing down the river, it sounded like a woman or child in horrible pain. We pulled up anchor and headed toward the sound. Soon we could see the cry for help wasn’t human at all. In a flash, I understood the colloquialism “sweatin’ like a stuck pig.” Hopelessly tangled in the Himalayan blackberry vines covering the riverbank was, in fact, a stuck pig and, given the ninety-degree heat, likely one sweating. The bank was so steep and the vines so thick there was no way of rescuing the poor creature.
With the full faculties of my twelve-year-old mind, I pondered that pig a while. My grandparents or great-grandparents never bothered with pigs that I knew of. There were chickens, turkeys, and goats for me to know and to develop opinions and reflections on, but no pigs. Still, you pick up things along the way, bumping into pig knowledge, especially pig physiology. For example, a pig’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew, the spiral taking the form of a left-hand thread. Also, you will never meet a star-gazing pig. While standing, it’s physically impossible for a pig to look up into the sky.
My wife and I had a beloved history professor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis who collected pig likenesses to aid in remembering the church’s most egregious heresies. Dr. Calhoun used drawings of a Gnostic pig and a Donatist pig—that sort of thing—the latter pig guilty of requiring that only the purest of priests administer the sacraments.
If you know anything about Christianity, you know that pure moral character, as in completely undiluted, is a fantasy.
And so I repeat: “Yet somehow, lost mammals large and small are shown cosmic favor to turn and return.” Or, we, as Humphrey did again in 1990, turn and return to somewhere we were never meant to be.
Excerpted from the memoir, Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music (Eerdmans 2205).
They reeled and staggered like drunkards; they were at their wits’ end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. — Psalm 107:27-30
Thank you Kristin Du Mez for your kind words below.
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Brilliantly written. I grew up in Nor Cal. Lake Almanor was where I spent my formative years. We used to float the river outside of Chico every 4th of July.
Grace is exactly like what penned so magically. A call to turn and return
Yes...good to read and ponder today. Whales and pigs are our teachers, as are musicians and engineers and stars and all the rest. I didn't know the story about the whale (born in 1985, as I was!) nor about the slightly sordid thoughts on pigs. I still love bacon.