60 Seconds for Time Out Tuesday: When Will You Be Ready to Leave Your Small River?

<p>Hello to you listening in <a href="https://www.yorkshire.com/saltburn/" target="_blank">Saltburn-by-the-Sea, North Yorkshire, England</a>!</p><p>Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds for Time Out Tuesday and your host, Diane Wyzga.</p><p>The salmon are running here. The ones that left our estuaries as small fry, headed out into the Pacific Ocean and return home a few years later as fully grown adults to spawn, their wild adventure at an end. Like the salmon there have been moments in my life when I risked it all, on a dream, a vision, a hope. My risk-taking ways have rewarded me with chances I could not have taken from the comfort of an armchair. But of late I find myself feeling rusty, maybe drifting in the current, anxious to feel alive in the old way.  </p><p>I know what calls me. <a href="https://davidwhyte.com/" target="_blank">David Whyte’s</a> (our Whidbey Island, Washington poet laureate) poem<strong> A Song For the Salmon</strong>, gives voice to that deepest longing, to be gone again on a great journey. Perhaps it will call to you...  </p><p><strong>A Song For the Salmon</strong></p><p>“<i>For too many days now I have not written of the sea,</i></p><p><i>nor the rivers, nor the shifting currents</i></p><p><i>we find between the islands.</i></p><p> </p><p><i>For too many nights now I have not imagined the salmon</i></p><p><i>threading the dark streams of reflected stars,</i></p><p><i>nor have I dreamt of his longing</i></p><p><i>nor the lithe swing of his tail toward dawn</i></p><p> </p><p><i>I have not given myself to the depth to which he goes,</i></p><p><i>to the cargoes of crystal water, cold with salt,</i></p><p><i>nor the enormous plains of ocean swaying beneath the moon.</i></p><p> </p><p><i>I have not felt the lifted arms of the ocean</i></p><p><i>opening its white hands on the seashore,</i></p><p><i>nor the salted wind, whole and healthy</i></p><p><i>filling the chest with living air.</i></p><p> </p><p><i>I have not heard those waves