Every year, thousands of salmon leave their home rivers and migrate to far off feeding grounds in the deep, cold waters of the sea. Instinctively, these young salmon know the path they need to travel and where they need to go. From their parents they inherit the knowledge that casts them thousands of miles along saltwater paths, to the places where they can eat, grow and change.
One year, a special salmon is born: Freda. This is the story of her life.
She is born in the upper reaches of the river, where she comes to know that she is alive. She begins to learn how to use her body, how to swim, glide and leap.
Among her kin, Freda makes a new friend: Jacob. Together they shoot and slide and flash through the cool, clear water of the river. They grow close, and that closeness blossoms into love.
Not long after, the call of the sea starts to make itself known in the fins and the hearts of the salmon. Something beyond words calls to them from inside. Calls in unison, telling Freda, Jacob and all their kin that a great journey must be made. That the comfort and safety of the river must be left behind. That they will have to travel downriver, to the boundary that marks the change from freshwater to salt.
This is a journey that will shape Freda's life. A journey that will test her faith.
It is a journey that will ask of Freda questions that many of us have asked of ourselves.
Who am I? What is my purpose here? Can love protect me when the world around me tests my faith?
Freda will be tested. The sea will test her faith. The journey will test her courage. And the dangers that nature places in her path will test her will to persist, her belief in herself and the love that she has borne.
On her journey she will make friends, she will lose friends. She will encounter things a young salmon swimming in the calm, tranquil waters of the birthing grounds could never imagine. And she will discover the truth of who she is. Of what her nature wills her to be.
Freda Salmon must make her journey. She must test her faith. She must meet the destiny her ancestors have laid out for her. And she must test the bonds of love that she and Jacob have woven together among the gentle flow of their birthplace.
This is her journey.
This is her story.
