Damariscotta Mills, Maine — Alewives move from the freshwater lakes of New England into and through thousands of miles of cold Atlantic Ocean. In the spring, as adult participants in nature's intrinsic clockwork, they swim back to the waters of their birth. Their journey, writes John Hay in his famous book, The Run, is oddly heroic, and it comes at great cost: Some 90 percent of the adult alewives do not survive the arduous move from ocean to stream. Unlike the salmon, whose migration is unseen beneath the surface of rivers, these fish pulse up small streams and pass through towns, under bridges and old mills. We begin our sunrise vigil on the shore of a large tidal collection pond and see these remarkable creatures as they run a gauntlet of obstacles — a fast flowing stream and a predatory phalanx of gulls, osprey and eagles. As witnesses, we are reminded of the truth of Hay's observation; the migration of alewives, he concludes, "is not only a matter of routes or seasonal behavior. It has to do with an internal response to this spinning globe and its unendingly creative energies."