April Bencze Wildlife Photography

Please watch this video and do what you can (call/write Minister of Fisheries, share this video, have conversations, etc.) to not let the Fraser River sockeye be wiped out completely by open-net pen salmon farms along their migration route.

'When I Am Among the Trees' a poem by Mary Oliver When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust,... equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile. The light flows from their branches. And they call again, It’s simple, they say, and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.

I don't recall if it was a Thursday or not, as time was bent so far back upon itself that I saw through the window of eternity for a whole lifetime, or maybe it was a heartbeat. Perhaps both. I have trouble telling the difference these days, these immeasurable days. As it is, I was not born to measure such things and I refuse to leave this body thinking that the years, the slippery years, the hands that tick and tell me I am too late, far too late, that any of these at all h...ave any sway on where it is that I am headed. If I want to know that, which I'm not sure I do, I might ask the wind. Perhaps I'd ask the sun, the sea, the stars, or the moon. The moon, who may in turn seek the tides to rise and rest and fall so I might silently drift without sail or sorrow upon the passages, so as to give myself time to be where it is I find myself. But time itself is a sly ghost of a gift because I always think I have more of it than I do, and so I too rarely give myself presence. And presence, as it happens, is the one who bent time back upon itself so I might glimpse eternity. And anyway, I already know where it is I am going because it has been inside of me all this time. All this time is a trickster because I have known all along that I know nothing at all for certain. Though, what I don't know is, I don't recall if it was a Thursday aside from the good fortune of the day suggesting otherwise. But then again, ever since this Thursday superstition began, I realized I was in fact waiting for that particular day for something to happen. And whatever happened I would measure it as bad or good fortune, and so decided instead to live Thursdays exclusively, because why not? Time, after all, is a sly ghost who shifts so well into whatever shape a thought may take. I might as well ask time to bend so kindly into a sail and look to the wind for which way it is that we are going now, and whether it matters even, because all I seem to be when I look through that window is eternal.

this body __________ i had seen glimpses of her growing up, held her in my hands, even... for just a moment of wonder that stuck, despite the slippery nature of her scales. i had heard her voice once or twice, but didn’t speak her language; her intangible tongue made sounds so diverse. i could whistle; but not like her not like the wind through cedar boughs in the dead of night. fleeting glimpses of her lost between walls and bright lights, drowned among a sea of faces priorities tangled and forgotten. but now - now, i am knowing her the way she welcomes me, with darkness interrupted by only her starlight igniting a perspective lost to the hungry glow of cityscapes. now, i am knowing her touch filling my lungs with flavour; tastes like everything that ever existed salty as significant as the time i take to contemplate this breath. i know her as shelter, as trees reconfigured into a roof, into warmth; her decades of growth thaw me, embracing this body -so death must wait another winter. i grow; and i know her as my bones, as the oxygen in my lungs, blood and well, all of this body i call my own - is her. i learn; from the sound of her meeting the shore with a thunder that warns me: the winds are dancing out there, and well, all of this knowledge i call my own is her. and as i come to know myself as her, i wonder why the wild was ever a stranger to begin with?

Pink salmon berry blossoms stand guard over a napping black bear. How quickly these freshly risen estuary greens become this bear's bed and breakfast. Sun rays on silky black fur is a better blanket than any woven; the winter is gone for now. The latter half of a winter makes faith in a beast's heart, and that faith for the next season's coming is rewarded by the creations of sun and April rain. The land explodes into a feast of blossoms and greens, while gratitude extingui...shes winter's scarcity from memory almost entirely, for the time being. The seasons tell us how to live, and we keep pace. Last autumn, salmon were so scarce I wasn't sure if we would see this black bear again after they went away to sleep. Sharing a bay with bears can be tricky to navigate, but moments like this, catching this one sprawled out in the shady estuary, surely make it worthwhile.