a carp encounter

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

a carp encounter Current mood: pleased The Carp as a spirit guide (gleaned from a google search, so take it for what it's worth): - Symbolizes courage, true love, foresight and the ability to attain high goals - Encourages overcoming life's obstacles leading to consequent success What an encouraging and aproppriate message for me, considering how overwhelmed I can get with all the things I hope to acheive. - Fish in general symbolize good luck and prosperity, so that's a nice reinforcement. Then I looked up Salmon, which I have a more in-depth reading of, and which is likely to carry similar symbology to Carp because they share some key characteristics, most importantly that they both swim far upstream to spawn. Salmon's tradition rounds out the reading nicely: - (from the Druid Animal Oracle) "Braden brings not only wisdom but youthfulness and inspiration, but remember that to find these things you must maintain an attitude of openness and innocence rather than strong-headed determination." So I have here reinforcement of my goals, encouragement to attain them and a suggestion on how to get there. Nice! * * * This all stems from my rather magical encounter with a monstrous carp last Sunday. I was relaxing all by myself (amazed? I was) in my kayak in the small lake at Billy's parents' place. It's a lovely spot anyway, but it's particularly special to me because Billy and I were married there, on a dock over that lake. Anyhow I'd paddled around for awhile, and was happily sitting back, just drifting aimlessly and daydreaming in the middle of the lake. A motion caught my eye, and I peered to see what it was- turtle? beaver? snake? fish? Interestingly enough, it was a dorsal fin- swimming lazily, poking out of the water shark-style. It wasn't huge of course, but I could tell it would have to be a pretty big fish. I decided to see if I could paddle for a closer look without scaring it away. One of the lovely things about a kayak is that you can get around very unobtrusively, so quiet that you can observe wildlife more easily. It took me a long time to get very close, since I was being so careful and the fish was swimming away from me. When I did finally get alongside though, I was amazed- nose to tail, the thing was probably almost as long as I am tall. It was a huge lake carp. I drifted next to it for a few minutes before it suddenly noticed me, and vanished. It was beautiful encounter.