The sound of crashing water, the smell of a stream, and the sight of hundreds of trout all gathering at your feet. Little children throw food in, giggling madly as the fish jump and race to the pellets. Groups of friends stroll by, remarking on the color of the fish.
I fell in love with the Li’l-Le-Hi trout nursery in September, just as summer came to a close. Since then, I have been dazzled by the fluttering trout dozens of times. I’ve brought my friends and family to walk the trails with me. I’ve seen it during the day, at sunset, at night.
Seasons have changed — from summer to autumn, and now from autumn to winter — and still, the small trout swim in schools. The giant trout continue to swim in circles in their giant caged-in pool. The old stone house stands tall, and the trees, regardless of their leaf status, sway gently in a breeze.
In a world of inconsistency, the fish hatchery has served as an undeviating oasis for me. It stays there, unchanging.
To me, this is what makes the fish hatchery the most meaningful: it never changes, and I never have to say goodbye.
That’s my problem. I can’t say goodbye. Not literally — my lips are capable of forming the words, and if I’m headed home for the day, I have no trouble giving a quick wave and leaving. When it comes to anything deeper, that’s where the trouble starts.
Everytime vacation is over, and I have to leave somewhere that became my home even for a few days, I cry enough to fill a fishbowl. If I’m watching a TV show I really enjoy, I will wait weeks — long enough that I stop caring about it — before I watch the last episode. My shower is lined with bottles of almost-but-not quite-empty bottles of shampoo.
I know ends are rarely easy, but I’m not quite sure why I have such a hard time with them.
It may be the finality of a goodbye. Once you lose an experience, even one as little as listening to an album for the first time, you can never get it back. Once I donate a shirt that was my favorite in middle school, I can never wear it again — not that it would even fit.
At risk of sounding pathetic, I must admit: I tend to wallow for ages after a goodbye. I first became a fish-hatchery regular after multiple friends had left for college, and I entered my senior year.
The change was all too much. I had to say goodbye to my friends as they left my day-to-day life. I had to say goodbye to the life of a not-yet college applicant. I had to go through my days knowing that soon enough, I would have to be the next to say goodbye and move into the next stage of my life.
And so I leaned into the consistency of the fish hatchery.
It seemed so reliable: there were always fish there, the structures and park stayed the same, and the nearby woods always chattered with wildlife.
When I really look, though, not even the fish hatchery is an exception when it comes to the force of change. The small hatchlings I looked at in September have doubled in size. The nets covering the pools sometimes have dead leaves clogging them up. There is a fraction of the amount of birds as there first were when I went.
I once even spoke to a volunteer there about getting involved. In her own words, she said that they would welcome new volunteers, as current ones were “getting old and dying off.”
Nothing is immune when it comes to time. Whether quickly or slowly, obviously or subtly, a change is gonna come.
Leaning into the constants of life has helped me. The fish hatchery has been my home base to shield me from the world that is changing so rapidly around me.
But what has helped me more is recognizing that even our “constants” can change. If everything is changing, all the time, even by a little, then big changes seem a lot less daunting.
When life consists of a million small changes, what is one more? We face countless small changes in our lives without even noticing. Even if it may not feel that way, I am prepared for a big change: I practice for it every single day.
