The River Landing

The July Transition

“Seasons turn and bring the change, the shifting of the weather vane”—from the song The Breath Between by David Francey

 

On the prairies, big bluestem panicles have emerged.  Corn tassels have grown out and, later each afternoon, cicadas call.  Swallows gather into flocks and perch on utility wires along country roads.  These are some of the signs I look for every July, of summertime passing, even as the longest day of the year remains a fresh memory.

          As I opened the entrance to our cabin’s driveway, I heard a distant dickcissel calling; and across the road, barn swallows and American goldfiches flew over a prairie planting with blooming gray-headed coneflowers and bee balm.  Through the trees, I saw Quiver Lake; during a typical July, I would expect low water with dispersing herons, egrets, and migrating shorebirds on the mud flats, which in some years can be quite extensive.  But recent heavy rains throughout the watershed have caused the Illinois River to rise, flooding over backwaters connected to the river.

 

Quiver Lake with a green ash struggling to survive against

flooding, drought, wind damage, and the emerald ash borer.

 

          Songs of breeding birds were less apparent than earlier in the month, but as I stood on the bluff edge overlooking the river valley, a tufted titmouse’s song drew my attention, and for a short while I listened to a yellow-throated vireo until the bird went silent.  From the direction of the lake, I heard red-headed woodpeckers calling and growling at each other, and down below, flood waters surrounded the bases of green ash, black willow, and silver maple trees that stood close to the lake’s normal shoreline.  My first thought was that it would be easy to launch my new canoe, chained to a tree above the historic high-water line.  The adventuresome part of me said to seize the moment; but the old man inside countered with:  It’s already a hot, humid day, destined to become hotter and probably too windy for canoeing.  Another time, I thought; but a person cannot say that too often until another time is out of reach.

          When I climbed down the bluff, I saw that grape vines had grown over most of the driftwood left over from previous floods.  Vines and flood debris, including large snags, would completely cover our lakefront if I did not clear things away every so often; this year I had been negligent.  There was plenty of work, which would have to wait for a cooler day; but the vines were winning.  Then I determined through careful consideration that reading a book in the shade while being cooled by slight breezes off the lake was the best option.  Or staring off into the distance, watching weather develop as clouds take shape, change, dissipate, or gather into isolated summer storms. 

          Reading a novel might be looked upon as a form of escapism, but in doing so, I try not to lose awareness of my surroundings, even slight movements, sounds, and subtle details.  Earlier in the month, while lost in the meld of mind and book, when the lake level was lower and slowly heading downward, I saw in my peripheral vision a soft-shelled turtle surface twenty or thirty feet beyond the shoreline seeps; great egrets walked in shallow waters on the other side of the lake stalking fish, and as I watched the egrets, a Caspian tern, the first of the summer, dove several times into the water for a fish before flying toward nearby Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.  About a week before, I was surrounded by thousands of mayflies in the air, and then I saw others clinging to every piece of vegetation along the lakeshore.  As I passed by, most would take flight at once, many landing on me; and even when I sat calmly against a large tree, they were drawn to me; so, annoyed, I left the beach area for another day.

 

            Mayflies on grape vines at Quiver Lake.

 

          On this latest visit, though, I saw no mayflies or remnants of mayflies.  But there were new piles of flood debris and stranded duckweed in rows parallel to the shoreline, giving evidence of how high flood waters had only recently been; some of the wood had been broken up into small pieces by previous wave action, looking very much like mulch one would buy at a garden center.  The entrepreneur in me wondered if it would be possible to gather up this free “river mulch” and sell it at a 100% profit:  natural and organic, healthy and chemical free.  So the idea is out there now, for anyone with the initiative.

          As I walked along thinking about river mulch, a spotted sandpiper called and took flight from a nearby partially sunken tree branch.  When the bird flew away from shore, wings beating in their typical vibrating manner, it was joined by another of the same species, possibly a breeding pair that could have been nesting nearby.  Then a killdeer called and flew from the bluff side of the lake toward open water and downriver out of sight, searching for open ground for foraging, with or without mud flats.

          Later I heard a calling eastern kingbird and saw it perched on an ash tree’s dead branch; the large branch extended over the water, and every once in a while, the kingbird left its perch and flew over the lake to catch a flying insect high above, and then return to the same tree.  I recalled earlier seeing a red-headed woodpecker performing a similar flycatching maneuver, but in a more awkward manner than the kingbird, flying after an insect one way and then another way and then another before making its catch.  I’ve always thought it strange for a woodpecker to engage in such an activity, which the species does not appear well suited for.  As I contemplated returning to the cabin, two great egrets flew over the flooded willow forest just beyond the other side of the lake; they were heading toward the wildlife refuge and would be searching for shallower waters.

          Conditions along the river and its floodplain are always changing, and that is what makes them interesting, even as the yearly cycle is predictable in a general sense.  So I look forward to the coming mud flats over the rest of summer and shorebirds from the Arctic, along with migrating osprey before too long, and then higher water levels in the fall with the waterfowl migration.  Autumn colors, bare trees, and then snow and the shortest day. 

          The years go by as they will, lengthening daylight for half of the year, progressively shorter daylight the other half, with time moving faster as I age.  And although those shorter days begin after the summer solstice in June, it’s not until the middle of July that I truly sense the transition.

 

Quiver Lake seeps exposed as lake levels drop with the Illinois River, August 10, 2024.

 

Quiver Lake on August 18, 2024 with great egrets foraging in the 

shallow lake waters (a sweep of the binoculars from north to south

yielded 47 great egrets).

 

So Many Days Like This

Morning eyes opened when ready, mind recalling a dissipating dream state:  sometimes a scene from a social gathering, a composite of many such real scenes, former work colleagues from different times all in the same dream space.  Unfinished business?  Unresolved issues?  Or no meaning whatsoever.

        Window blinds opened for a sense of the day’s weather.  Wash up and climb down the stairs.  Coffee outside on the deck for a while to feel the morning breezes; listen to the neighborhood sounds of people beginning their days; take note of the late spring bird community, the reliable members as they appear on the scene:  house sparrow, house wren, Carolina wren, house finch, American goldfinch, northern cardinal, American robin, American crow, blue jay, European starling, common grackle, mourning dove, chimney swift, ruby-throated hummingbird, gray catbird, chipping sparrow, brown-headed cowbird, eastern phoebe, eastern wood-pewee, great crested flycatcher, turkey vulture, Cooper’s hawk, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, black-capped chickadee, cedar waxwing.

        Breakfast.  Could be scrambled eggs, Cream of Wheat, polenta, grits, bagel and a banana, cereal, or oat meal.  My wife and I share our dreams.  Later, upstairs with the acoustic guitar:  “Born in Chicago,” “How Lucky,” “Brand New Good Old Days,” “It Sure Can Get Cold in Des Moines,” “Good To Be,” “Little Bird in Heaven,” “Monday Morning Blues.”

        Before the day is hot, bicycle the usual route at Compton Park along Killjordan Creek; through the northeast part of town, where, before the civil rights era, Black residents of Macomb were once restricted to make their homes; down Dr. C.T. Vivian Way and Randolph Street; through Chandler Park, the town square, and back home.

        The last morning hour: read, check e-mail, and back to reading.

        Lunchtime sandwiches online from Jimmy John’s and out to Argyle Lake State Park to a specific picnic table.  Over the lake, we’ll look for a belted kingfisher, red-shouldered hawk, bald eagle, great blue heron, green heron, or northern rough-winged swallow.  We’ll follow the park road, through dense forests and ravines, around the lake, then county highways through an intensively farmed landscape to Lakeview Nature Area and our honeybee hive.

         Back home.  More reading, maybe some writing:  an essay for the blog, short story, or the novel-in-progress.  Read until consciousness begins to fade in a natural way; eyes heavy, heavier…and out for around thirty minutes or more.

         Awaken at some point for weight training and exercise with music for the better part of an hour; these days it might be Stillhouse Junkies, Rory Block, The John Byrne Band, John Gorka, Rum Ragged, Kate Rusby, or Antje Duvekot.

         Sit out back under the beautiful Bradford pear tree before dinner.  Gray squirrels crossing over the yard on electric wires; a bullfrog in the pond; busy adult birds feeding young; a barred owl calling; cottontail rabbits, their superfast young zooming around foraging on our costly horticultural plants.  Rabbits would be everywhere, eating everything were it not for predation, the owl’s role.  Animals must eat.  And it’s dinnertime, our day’s largest meal, followed by short episodes of an older television show, from a time when the bar on grossness and offensiveness was much higher.

         Catch up on the day’s news items:  progress toward another Moon landing, International Space Station, wars, civil strife, our porous southern border, wasting the taxpayer’s money, North Korean sabre rattling with missile launches and nuclear explosions, economic sanctions, terrorism, genocide, mass shootings, refugee camps and famine, oppression, hostage taking, criminals and lunatics in high places, COVID down but not out, bridge and road collapses, natural disasters, and the usual climate change mantra wherever it can be squeezed into a story.  Music is better:  Greg Maroney piano with cello, solo piano playlist.

         And finally, sleep again.  A full day; a full, good life.  Fortunate to be where we are, my wife and I.

 

Imagining the Mississippi River

How might this river be encompassed, memorized, and understood?  Stand on the bank of the Mississippi River, anywhere is fine, and view it as the remaining sum of everything it once was.  With its headwaters in the north woods of Minnesota, from a small lake within red and white pine forests sustained by fire; then further south through a wide floodplain between high bluffs, some with hill prairies, a dry, fire-prone community; then tortuously meandering through the deep south; its complex discharge of water, products of erosion, debris, and various lifeforms—from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rockies—finally flows through a land of southern swamps with buttressed bald cypress and coastal marshes, before dissipating into the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The Mississippi River as it flows out of nearby Lake Itasca, Minnesota (2005).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mississippi River in the Driftless Area at Guttenberg, Iowa, above Lock and Dam #10 (1989).

 

The Mississippi River as it flows through northwestern Illinois' Driftless Area (2003).
 

        Travel the river, but view in frustration only up to the next bend.  So create a panorama of still shots along the way, two dimensions from a dynamic three, flattened and stretched, only a semblance of reality.  And what of the scenes between images?  Memorize the rest and rely upon the unreliability of recollection.  Or measure and record with a scientific method, converting its shifting complexity into static tables of numbers and graphs generated from computer-assisted multivariate statistical analyses.  Synthesize, synthesize, synthesize.  What are the resulting images?  More numbers and graphs.  Where does this leave understanding?  And what about between sampling points?

 

The Mississippi River at Davenport, Iowa, and Lock and Dam #15 (2024).

 

A side channel of the Mississippi River called Andalusia Slough,

about 10 miles downriver from the Quad Cities.  Andalusia Island

is on the right (2022).

 

        One must not overlook the time factor.  For the Mississippi is always changing.   A yearly spring flood is an expected event, sometimes profoundly altering the river’s course.  Within its substrate and biota, subtle links exist that point to earlier versions of today’s river, some going back millions of years.  Other clues are more recent and obvious, such as abandoned channels and oxbow lakes, showing where the river had once flowed.

 

A narrow channel entirely within the Mississippi River's Long Island, just upriver

from Quincy, Illinois (2003).
 

        Still more recent, insignificant on a geologic time scale, is the river’s human history.  A travel route—since the last glaciers retreated northward—in canoes, flatboats, wood- and coal-fired steamboats, diesel-powered towboats pushing lashed-together barges, and trains rolling along tracks following along the river banks.  Because we are less inclined to grant the river its wild demands, it has been civilized with levees, wing dams, riprap, retaining walls, articulated concrete mat banks, and a system of locks and dams.  The Mississippi is a regulated river:  for commerce, resources, flood control until it's uncontrolled, and to carry away what our modern society would rather not think about.

 

The Mississippi River at Quincy, Illinois, with a towboat pushing barges,

a train crossing on a river bridge, and vehicles crossing the river on US Highway 24 (2020).

 

Mark Twain's childhood hometown along the Mississippi River at Hannibal, Missouri (2022).

 

A recently burned hill prairie with a pre-historic Indian mound at McAdams Peak, Pere

Marquette State Park, Illinois, near the confluence of the Illinois and 

Mississippi rivers (2023).

 

A levee break that occurred during the Great Flood of 1993.

Photograph near St. Louis, Missouri, from an airliner window as

the plane banked, October 1993.

 

At the river town of Grafton, Illinois, about 15 miles north of St. Louis,

Missouri, at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers a few

years after the Great Flood of 1993.  The 1993 high water mark is noted

on the building. 
  

 

View of the American Bottoms from the Illinois bluffs.  St. Louis,

Missouri is in the distance (far left center) (1990).

 

The Middle Mississippi River (between St. Louis, Missouri, and

Cairo, Illinois) at Trail of Tears State Park, Missouri, showing wing dams

and a towboat pushing barges.  Southern Illinois' Shawnee Hills

are visible in the distance.

 

 

Bald cypress at an oxbow lake in southern Illinois at the northern-most

portion of the Mississippi Embayment. 

 

The meandering lower Mississippi River (downriver from Cairo, Illinois)

at the border between Arkansas and Mississippi (yellow line).  Photograph

by staff at the International Space Station on 2 April 2020 (nasa.gov). 

 

        It would be the rare bottomland forests, prairies, and wetlands that appear not much altered from before the dams where links remain to form a rough starting point to imagine what the past may have been like; burial and effigy mounds from pre-historic cultures fill in more of the blanks; and updated maps over the years present in abstract the changing watershed and provide the context.  So much alluvium to be sifted through and interpreted.

 

Wetland within Turkey Island on the Mississippi River near Lock

and Dam #9 and New Boston, Illinois (1995). 

 

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

 

As I entered our den with a handful of corn chips in a loose napkin, Julie quickly looked up, eyeing me suspiciously.  I like to snack on chips while reading, but bringing in the entire bag would give license to eating all of the chips in one sitting—probably not a healthy choice.  Hence, the handful of chips.

        “Don’t make crumbs now!” said Julie.

        “I don’t make crumbs,” I replied.

        “Well, where do all the crumbs on the floor come from?”

        “I think you might be the crumb maker.  Why do we assume it’s automatically me?”

        “There’s nothing to assume darling.  When I moved your leather recliner the other day, guess what I found underneath?  Broken corn and potato chips that had been lying there for who knows how long.”  And from there she followed with a wide-eyed look directly at the floor and then back at me.

         “Well, I guess you’ve got me on this one.”  Then, trying to salvage my dignity, I said, “But you know, sometimes you sit on the recliner.”

         “Oh, don’t even try to go there mister.”  And so, I quietly sat down with my book and chips, recalling that Julie was not the first to point out that sometimes, for whatever reason, I have a tendency to be unaware that certain of my actions may have effects on my immediate surroundings.  I take that as a sign of intelligent introspection, but I could be wrong.

         There have been similar situations.  Back in the 1990s I had a small office at the Forbes Biological Station located along Quiver Creek at the Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.  During lunchtime, I enjoyed taking short walks in the woods, usually finding a nice place to sit beneath a tree.  One of my favorite walks was following the creek to where it emptied into Quiver Lake.  That was low-lying ground, though, and sometimes it could get muddy.  During one of those times, the Illinois River had just gone down from a flood, probably a day or two earlier, so the ground was soft and wet, a situation that I did not discover until my feet began to sink.  The creek bottoms not being a good place for hiking that day, I returned to the levee road and then, after a while, sadly walked back to the office.

         I was sitting at my desk staring at the computer when the director appeared at the office doorway saying, “Uh…Tom…you tracked mud all over the floor.”

         “How do you know it was me?” I defensively asked.

         “Well…the mud clods on the floor lead right to your office.”  I then looked down and saw a small pile of mud under my desk and an undeniable trail leading to where the director stood.

         “Oh…sorry,” I said.  “I’ll clean it up.”

         “Yes,” the director replied, shaking his head as he walked away.  Thinking about this, I could see that Julie knows me only too well, predicting when she saw me enter the den with chips that there was a good chance I would leave crumbs on the chair and then on the floor.  

         Back in high school, one of my friends, Jeff, was already out of school.  He worked full time and had saved enough money to buy a brand new 1975 Chevy Camaro.  Jeff was very proud of his new car.  He kept it showroom clean, and tried never to park it near another vehicle.  Of course, he wanted to show off the car to his friends, but it was obvious that he was nervous about taking it out on the busy streets of the Chicago area.  But when you’re around twenty years old, driving around town in a car full of friends is what you do.

        Jeff’s Camaro still had the “new car smell” when I was invited to be part of the group tooling around town.  “Ah, smell that new car smell,” he would say while taking in a deep breath; like the tiny bits of rubber sticking out of new tires, it was part of the magic and aura of being the first owner of a new automobile.  One doesn’t purchase a new car very often, especially at his age, so he was due this small indulgence without ridicule. 

        Probably no one knows how long the new car smell might last; but one day it is gone, and the car becomes just another used car.  But before such a development could naturally happen on its own, there was an incident.  Jeff, two others, and I had just piled back into the car, probably after eating at Burger King, when a different kind of smell hit us like a freight train.

        “What the…,” screamed Jeff.  “I smell dog shit!  Who stepped in dog shit?  Tom?” 

        “Hey, why are you looking at me?” I said in defense.

        “Okay, everybody out.  Check your shoes.”

        All four of us then frantically hopped around next to the car attempting to inspect the bottoms of our shoes.  Unfortunately, what I discovered was a dirty brown, glue-like, putty-like substance solidly embedded in between the deep treads on one of my hiking shoes.  “Okay,” I finally said with exaggerated remorse. “It’s me.”

        “I knew it!  Well, clean it off,” said Jeff.  “You’re not getting back in this car with stinking dog shit on your shoes.  And make sure you didn’t get any on the carpeting.”  Looking up at the sky, he added, “Damn!  He gets into my new car with dog shit on his shoes.”  The other guys were no less sympathetic.

        “Sorry,” I offered, “I guess that just about does it for the new car smell.”

        Getting my shoes clean was another matter.  I scrounged around and found a stick that I used to get most of it off, but getting all of it out from the grooves and corners of the shoe bottom was impossible.  To Jeff’s credit, he didn’t force me to walk home, and we stayed friends, but all the way home the car retained its new smell, and probably for some time after.  From that day forward, though, I don’t think he ever failed to ask me to check my shoes before getting into his car or home. 

        In the final analysis, I think what some might see as a person oblivious to his surroundings, I see as a person not distracted by unimportant details.  It’s related to a basic human survival strategy that has been honed over millions of years.  How else, for example, could a man within the chaos of a running herd of herbivores, on the African savannas, run a spear through a selected individual in the herd, at a vulnerable place in the body no less, and succeed in the attempt?  That same intensive focus might be applied during a timed mathematics examination, where one has to imagine the details of the problem at hand in the abstract while translating the relevant unknowns into complex equations.  How would Einstein have deduced the structure of the Universe if he had been unable to focus on his thought experiments, if he had been more concerned with not making crumbs or minutely examining the ground before taking a single step?  Now, are crumbs really that important, in a relative sense?

 

The author during a walk on the Illinois River bottomlands.
  

The Way Forward

“There’s no accounting for the inaccuracies of memory or the prognostications one can only see looking backwards.”— Jennifer Delahunty, from “Future Perfect,” an essay published in Fourth Genre, Spring 2022.

 

In my mind’s eye, as clear as what once was reality, I saw the trail winding ahead through a rough forested landscape of bluffs and ravines at Spring Lake Park north of Macomb.  For the longest time, the only wildlife was a fleeing white-tailed deer.  Where are the birds?  I had wondered.  I was there for the hike, but I also wanted to see birds, maybe catch the tail end of the fall migration.  So I slowly kept following the trail, highly attentive to my surroundings.  Still, all I heard was the wind.  But then, after a short while, as if a genie had granted a wish, I heard a faint “kluk, kluk, kluk, kluk” echoing among the trees.  A pileated woodpecker.  I knew these woods were large enough to attract this species, but they’re not common.  In the leafless forest, I was able to track down the bird by listening for its calls and searching with my binoculars.  It was about 500 feet away, climbing the side of a shagbark hickory.  Then, as if my mind-video had lost its streaming connection, the images dissipated, replaced by the actual reality and frustration of being stretched out on the living room couch, starring at the ceiling, as I paused between chapters of Paul Theroux’s novel, The Family Arsenal.

 

Pileated woodpecker (Photo credit:  Cornell Lab of Ornithology).

 

        Doctor’s orders.  I was into the second week of recovery from outpatient surgery:  lie down as much as possible during the day, no hiking, no exercise, lift nothing heavier than a gallon of milk.  I think I never realized just how incredibly delicate is the human body.  Could recovery really take four weeks?

        Outside it was all deep snow and ice; two bad January storms back to back.  My wife Julie shoveling; me watching out the window, feeling helpless as a newly hatched spring chicken.  I adjusted the headphones and listened to solo piano music, hoping to perhaps drift off to sleep and dream of better days.  And while attempting to steer my dream’s subject matter, I thought again about past encounters with pileated woodpeckers.

         I saw my first around 1980 while vacationing in a small cabin near a remote lake in northeastern Minnesota, just outside the Superior National Forest.  This was the truest wilderness I had ever seen, stretching to the U.S. border and into Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park.  At the time, I was living in the Chicago area, before I had really begun paying attention to birds; so house sparrows, rock doves, and American robins were nearly the only birds I noticed, and then not very closely.  I glanced out the cabin window as I ate breakfast when a large black and white bird with a red crest, comparable to a crow, drew my attention as no other bird had ever done.  It landed on a tree stump and began pounding its massive beak into the rotting wood, searching for insects, I assumed.  I was excited to see this rare bird, one that I imagined could only be encountered in a wilderness.

         After that, I began thinking of the pileated woodpecker as a bird exclusively of the pristine North Woods.  I never expected to see one south of the Wisconsin border, let alone in Chicago.  So when I returned home, I left thoughts of pileated woodpeckers in Minnesota and focused on my college studies and finding a way into a depressed job market.

        Several years later I was on a summer trip visiting the forested areas of southeastern Missouri when, at Trail of Tears State Park, I had another close encounter with a pileated woodpecker.  The day was hot and humid, and the forest was dense and tall; the sense of being alone in a vast wild area was not an illusion.  And when I saw the bird, it seemed to be a highly appropriate sighting considering the surroundings, but it also challenged my rigid association of this bird with the North Woods.  They were more widespread than I had assumed.  For some reason, though, I never thought about consulting a bird guide for more information, preferring, I guess, to learn by experience.

        Once I began spending more time along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers in southwestern and central Illinois, I soon noticed that pileated woodpecker sightings were quite reliable in the bottomland forests, which tend to have large fast-growing trees such as eastern cottonwood and silver maple.  And I usually had little trouble finding large holes in trees, some rectangular, that had been excavated by these birds as they foraged for insects or hammered out spacious nesting cavities, which might one day be used by wood ducks.

 

Holes excavated by pileated woodpeckers.

 

        One particularly vivid recollection of a pileated woodpecker that I often replay in my head occurred near Andalusia along the Mississippi River.  I was following the Great River Road on a quite indirect route back to Macomb.  Despite its name, the road provided only occasional glimpses of the river itself.  So when a sign announced a small roadside park near the river, I immediately pulled off the highway.  At the parking area, I didn’t see a trail leading to the river, so I bushwhacked my way to the riverbank through some brush and flood debris.  From there I had an unobstructed view of the 8.5-mile-long Andalusia Island across the side channel; the Mississippi’s main channel was on the other side of the half-mile-wide island.  After only a few moments, a pileated woodpecker, about a quarter of a mile downstream, flew across the channel toward the forested island.  Its characteristic undulating flight was unmistakable.  That scene has remained undiminished in sharpness and detail.

 

The Mississippi River and Andalusia Island.

 

*        *        *

Three weeks and I was losing patience with the slow recovery from surgery, even though lying around reading all day is nearly my favorite activity.  Mild temperatures had returned, melting the deep snows of January; northern cardinals and house finches tentatively sang.  So Julie and I seized the day to check on our cabin—closed up for the winter—along the Illinois River valley at Quiver Lake.

         Along the way, my mind easily shifted into birding mode, noting American kestrals perched on utility wires along the highway, a few soaring red-tailed hawks, an occasional bald eagle, and small flocks of horned larks in the bare-soil farm fields and along the roadside.  But there really was not much wildlife in the flat, gently rolling uplands.  Then east of the small town of Ipava, the ravines began to deepen as we neared the Spoon River valley; habitats became more diverse; and there eventually followed the wide Illinois River valley, with bottomland lakes, sloughs, wetlands, forest, and fields.  This is what I needed to help pull me forward to better days. 

         At the Emiquon Preserve and Refuge area we ate our lunch as thousands of snow geese rested in the open waters or occasionally took to the air in gradually building numbers until nearly all the birds were circling; then most of them would settle back to the water until the next cause for alarm, which seemed to be as simple as a lone bald eagle flying too close.  Nearly two miles away, across wetlands and open water, a towboat-barge traveled down the flooding Illinois River; the water was high enough so the tops of the barges were visible above the distant levee.  Later we pulled over to the side of the levee highway to view small groups of waterfowl, and here we heard our first red-winged blackbird song of the year, an event that I have long assigned to be the official beginning of the spring bird migration, the ending of which, by my reckoning, would be in May with the first call of a yellow-billed cuckoo, newly arrived from South America.  Near the blackbirds, a hidden western chorus frog called—another first for the season.

          Our cabin remained intact and safe, and I was relieved not to find a fallen tree blocking our entrance lane or even worse, a tree lying across the cabin itself.  During a brief walk down the bluffs to the flooded lakeshore, I scanned with my binoculars, from the southwest to the north, for birds flying over the floodplain forests on the far side of Quiver Lake.  But of course, I knew as I was doing so that just scanning for a pileated woodpecker would be unlikely to produce one.  We stayed only a short time at our cabin before beginning the hour drive back home; plenty of time to sort through the day’s highlights.

*        *        *

Upon returning to our quiet Macomb neighborhood from the cabin, we both had a feeling that was similar to what we typically had experienced after a long road trip from a very different and wild land.  When I entered our living room and saw the couch, though, I could no longer avoid the thought of having to slide back into a severe rest and recovery mode, at least for a little while.  Back to reading all day and traveling via my mind’s eye—our time at the cabin now being a gentle reminder that there was life beyond the living room walls.  Looking up from my books and glancing out the window would no longer create a sense of frozen exile, but would now pull me forward, along with the imperceptibly lengthening daylight hours, toward a cautious optimism.  More days at the cabin, spring wildflowers, and planning a fall trip to New England, including Maine’s North Woods and its pileated woodpeckers.

 

Reference

DeVore, S., S.D. Bailey, and G. Kennedy.  2004.  Birds of Illinois.  Lone Pine Publishing, Auburn, Washington.

The Mud Bar (fiction)

Ice flows and bald eagles on the Mississippi River.

 

Jack Thompson and his friend Duff were on their usual barstools at the Shotgun Shack Bar and Grill watching out the window as chunks of ice slowly floated past on the Mississippi River.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and they were both indoor bound, neither man venturing out on the river very much during the winter months.  Each had run out of stories of what they intended to do once spring arrived, so they both noticeably perked up when the uniformed postal delivery woman came through the front door with an armful of mail, including the weekly Waterford Observer newspaper. 

        “Here you go,” she said without eye contact, handing the whole stack of mail to Donal Hayes, the Shotgun’s owner and bartender.

        “Thanks,” replied Donal, as he silently watched the short, stocky woman turn abruptly and head toward the exit.

        “Not much of a talker, is she?” said Duff.

        “No,” said Donal.  “I don’t even know her name.  Well, some folks are private, and that’s their right.”

        “Yeah, I guess,” said Duff.  “Hey Donnie, can I see that there newspaper?”

        “Well hell Duff, I ain’t even seen the funnies yet, and it’s my paper!”

        “Don’t worry Donal,” said Jack.  “He can’t even read, so you’ll have your paper back pretty quick.”  Duff looked a bit hurt as the two men enjoyed a belly laugh.

        “Whaddya mean Jack?  I can read.”

        “I know.  I know.  Just kidding.  We know you’re smart,” said Jack as he gently patted Duff on the shoulder.

        “Just for that, you’re buying the next round.”

        “Fair enough.”

        “Well looky here,” said Duff.  “The Palm Tree Inn is closin’ already. Not even in business for a year.”

        “I knew they wouldn’t make it,” said Jack, “even with all the fancy decorating to make you feel like you’re near the ocean.  What could they have been thinking?  This isn’t Florida or Honolulu.  ‘The Palm Tree Inn!’  Jesus!”

        “It was pretty high dollar too,” said Duff.  “Helen made me take her there once, and the bill was like seventy-five dollars.  For only two people.”

        “Well, if you didn’t have ten beers, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad.”  Donal was at the other end of the bar, but his smile at that comment was unmistakable.

        “Yeah well…anyway.  What they shoulda done is focus on the river right in front of their damn faces and play up on that.”

        “Isn’t that what the Shotgun is doing?” asked Jack, as he motioned toward the mounted channel catfish on the opposite wall, a fishing net hanging from the ceiling, and sets of old ores flanking both restroom doors.

        “Yeah, kinda,” said Duff.  “But what I’m talkin’ about is called a theme.  You know what a theme is?”

        “Yeah, I know what a theme is.  You’ve been reading again, haven’t you?” 

        After pausing in silence with closed eyes in response to Jack’s snarky question, Duff finally said, “Look, what’s the one thing the river has more of than anything else?”

        “Good ole’ boys with big ideas that never get off the barstool?”

        “I’m bein’ serious now.  Think…alright, it’s mud.  It’s called the muddy Mississippi after all, ain’t it.  So my idea is—and I been thinkin’ about this for a while now—a place called The Mud Bar.  It would be billed as ‘The dirtiest bar and grill in the US.’  Above the entrance door is a sign that says ‘Please don’t wipe your feet!’  And on the food menu, there’s items like driftwood fries and the mudburger.  It’s a hamburger, but with dark gravy to make it look like mud, and the American cheese is dyed black.  Get it?  It looks like mud.  Mississippi River mud.”

        “Yeah, I see where you’re going with it.  But isn’t that kind of a turnoff as far as being appetizing?  What does Helen think?”

        “For one thing, she thinks the Health Department would never approve.  Helen wasn’t enthusiastic.”

        “I guess that doesn’t surprise me.  You think any woman would want to eat in, and I quote, ‘the dirtiest restaurant in the country.’  Would you even have toilets in the restroom, or just pee in the corner.”  Jack couldn’t help laughing at his own joke.

        “First of all, it’s ‘dirtiest bar and grill,’ not ‘restaurant.’  Look, I’m just tryin’ to do what she wanted.  She keeps sayin’ I need to do more with my life than stock shelves part-time at the grocery, hunt n’ fish, and sit on my fat ass at this bar the rest of the time.  Well, this is my idea.  Excuse me.”

        “You ready for another beer?”

        “Sure.”

        Jack placed his empty mug at the inner edge of the bar as a signal to Donal that he wanted a refill and said, “Anything else good in the paper?”

        “Nah.  Matt Morrison’s arrested again for poaching.”

        “Look,” said Jack, “it was an interesting idea, I’ll give you that.  Keep thinking though.”

        “Well, some of us was made to think and some of us was made to drink.  Where’s Donnie and them beers anyway?”

Birding from a Barstool (fiction)

 

Mississippi River boat ramp and river islands.

 

From his barstool at the Shotgun Shack Bar and Grill, Jack watched the Mississippi River flowing high and fast.  He really would have preferred to be out on the river.  But canoeing in fast water was a one-way trip, and he had no desire to be carried far downstream with no way to get back; the river could also be dangerous in a flood, with its turbulence, powerful eddies, and floating trees.  So instead, Jack accepted merely looking at the river through several large picture windows located right behind the bar.  He also viewed part of the town of Shotgun, Illinois, basically a few rundown cabins on stilts, a bait shop, and a poorly maintained gravel-bottomed boat ramp.  One of the world’s great escape hatches, as most of the locals viewed it.  Jack enjoyed being the only customer at the Shotgun, but that never lasted too long, especially as the noon hour approached.

          “Another beer?” asked Donal Hayes, the Shotgun’s owner and bartender.

          “Sure,” replied Jack.

          “Run a tab for you today?  We got Emma’s catfish special for lunch.  Fresh from the river too.”

          “Yeah, run a tab.  Catfish sounds good.”

          “Great,” said Donal.

          Jack then abruptly grabbed his binoculars and focused his attention across the river’s side channel.  There was a small bird walking on a log at Shell Island just above the water line.

          “What’re you seeing out there Jack?” asked Donal.

          “Spotted sandpiper.”

          “A bird, I assume.  Is that rare?  I never heard a such a bird.”

          “It’s not rare,” said Jack, “but my guess is that most people, other than birders, probably never heard of it either.”

          “Yeah, you might be right.  And you are the birdwatcher.”

          “There are also hundreds of swallows flying back and forth just over the water and high in the air.  You can’t see them without binoculars. But I counted six species.”

          “Huh,” was all Donal could think to reply.  Other than ducks and geese during the waterfowl hunting season, Donal wasn’t much interested in birds.

          He was filling up Jack’s empty beer mug when three unkempt, long-bearded men, all dressed in dirty coveralls with muddy boots, clomped through the bar’s side entrance, and abruptly plopped down at a table near the jukebox.

          “Be right with you,” called Donal, who headed into the kitchen to inform Emma the lunch crowd was starting.

          Jack focused his attention back to the river, and quietly placed his binoculars on his lap below the bar.  He soon was tuning out whatever was happening in the bar as more customers arrived, the jukebox was fired up, and the noise level increased.  As a towboat pushed eight barges up the river’s main channel beyond Shell Island, Jack marveled as a bald eagle left its perch in a tall cottonwood tree, circled behind the towboat, and plucked a large fish from the boat’s roiling wake.  In his mind’s eye, he was out there with the eagle.  When a second eagle flew over the still turbulent wake, Jack pulled out his binoculars again for a better look; and he was so intensely focused, he was unaware that his friend Duff had entered the bar and was standing right beside his barstool.

          “What’re you seeing out there—I know you get nervous when someone asks you that.”  The reaction that most folks displayed was what made Jack uncomfortable:  one of confusion and a clear assessment of Jack as being a bit strange for watching birds.  So he was fine with keeping his business to himself. 

          “Hey Duff!”

          “I thought you might be here.  Not a good day for canoeing the river.”  Duff waved at Donal who was talking to a couple of older middle-aged women at the other end of the bar.  When he finished with the women, Donal brought Duff his usual Budweiser in a can.

          “Thanks Donnie,” said Duff.

          “Run you a tab today?”

          “Yeah sure, I’ll probably be here for a while.”  And with that, Donal went off to take care of the bar’s other customers.

          “Whoa!” said Jack, quite a bit louder than he intended. “There goes a pileated woodpecker.  It’ll be going over to the timber at Goose Lake Bottoms or Big Island.  See it, Duff, flying up the river from Shell Island?”

          “Yeah, I see it.  That’s one big-ass woodpecker.  Hey Jack, what’s the plan for today?  You just going to sit around here looking out on the river all day?”

          “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.  There’s a belted kingfisher.  See it?”

           After a while, Donal eventually returned from attending to customers sitting at tables and bringing out several lunches from the kitchen, including Jack’s catfish.  “Doin’ okay here?” he asked both Jack and Duff.

          “How about a pitcher, Jack?” said Duff.  “That way, Donnie here won’t have to keep running back and forth for us every few minutes.”

          “Yeah, good idea,” said Jack.  “You know, I think it would be interesting to keep a bird list for the bar.”

          “Whatever turns you on Jack.  You watch the birds and I’ll keep tabs on that there pitcher of beer coming our way.”

          “Good deal,” said Jack, and both men laughed.  “Okay, there’s a great blue heron flying.  And soaring way up, about a hundred American white pelicans, with two turkey vultures joining the group.  Here, use the binoculars.”

          “No thanks,” said Duff.  “You can be the bird watcher, not me.”

          “Okay, but you’re missing out on seeing an amazing sight.  There, see that bird flying kind of like a crow?”

          “It’s not a crow?” replied Duff.

          “No, it’s a green heron.”

          “You sure?  It’s pretty far away.  How do you know for sure?”

          Jack was about to answer when he noticed the two women, who were earlier at the other end of the bar, coming closer.

          “Hey Duff,” said the shorter and heavier of the two women.  “You a birdwatcher now?”

          “Hey Angie,” replied Duff, avoiding direct eye contact. “No, that’s Jack here.  I’m just along for the ride.  I do my bird watchin’ on ducks and geese…with a rifle.  Hey Sallie.” Both women smiled.

          “I’m making a bird list for the bar,” said Jack, in as suave a manner as he could muster with such a statement.  Duff slyly glanced around the room to see if anyone else could hear their conversation.

          “That’s real interesting Jack,” said Angie.  “Good luck.  I mean it.  Let us know what you see.  And nice to meet you.  We’ll see you around then.”

          “Yeah, nice to meet you,” said Sallie, and the two women turned and walked toward the exit.  Just before leaving, Angie turned to Sallie and whispered in her ear, “That Jack can eat crackers in my bed any day.”  Both women let out some devilish laughter and glanced back at Jack, who had already returned to his binoculars and the river.

          Duff said, “I think they like you Jack.  Play your cards right, if you know what I mean.”

          “Yeah well, they’re a little old for me.”

          “They’re both married anyway.  Could get you in a mess of trouble.  Angie’s husband used to be a boxer.  I seen him in bar fights, and, well, the other guy never even had a chance.”

          “Great advice you’re giving me,” said Jack, with both men laughing.  “Hey, how’s Helen these days?”

          “Ah, Helen.  I think she’s getting ready to break up with me,” answered Duff.

          “What makes you say that?”

          “Well, she keeps harping on me that she thinks I’m insensitive.  I think she’s just making up stuff for an excuse to break up.”

          “How so?  Great egret flying upriver.”

          “It all started when we stopped for gas a few days ago.  I pay for the gas and a soda for her.  The cashier says, ’Have a nice day’ as we’re walking out the door.  I say, ‘Yeah’ and I keep on walking.  Helen says I was rude, that I should have said, ‘You too, have a nice day’ or something like that.  I told her the cashier didn’t really mean ‘Have a nice day.’  It’s just something they say.  So I’m insensitive is her conclusion.”

          “Well,” replied Jack, “there is something called ‘common curtesy.’”

          “Oh, now it’s you too?  Okay, here’s another of her gripes:  She’s coming over last Friday night to watch a movie and get a pizza.  I didn’t have time to clean up the house—she’s always buggin’ me to clean, clean, clean…who has time for that?—anyway, so I put this red lightbulb in the bathroom, you know, so you have light, but can’t see the dirt.  Hey, there’s a bird I know.  Canada goose!  Pow!  Pow!”

          “Yep, good sighting, Duff.”

          “Anyway, she figures out the, you know, logic…uh…gets mad, and calls me a slob.  Says if I really cared for her, I’d have cleaned the toilet.  I says, ‘Hey, I went out and bought a red lightbulb, didn’t I?” 

          “You know,” said Jack after he stopped laughing, “I once had a woman break up with me for something I did in her dream.  In her dream!  When she told me about it, I refused to apologize, and it was a downward spiral from then on.”

          “So anyways Jack, in answer to your original question, Helen is right now not speakin’ to me.  And I guess I’m fine with that.  Better to find out now that things ain’t gonna work rather than wastin’ years arguing.”

          “Yeah, who wants to argue the rest of your life?  And there goes a Caspian tern!  Wow!  First one this summer.”

          “You mean that there sea gull?”

          “It’s not a sea gull.  It’s a tern.  And by the way, there’s no such thing as a sea gull.  It’s just ‘gull.’  Or maybe ring-billed gull, herring gull, or some other type.  But never sea gull.  You’ll embarrass yourself if you’re with other birders.”

          “Well excuse me.  One good turn deserves another, eh?”

          Jack simply shook his head at his friend’s attempt at birding humor.  “Eastern phoebe on the right, over on the lower branch of that old bur oak.  And there goes a group of little blue herons in calico plumage.”

          “Calo…what did you say?”

          But before he could think of a witty comeback, the three men in coveralls who had come in earlier walked over to the bar and stood next to Jack and Duff, motioning to Donal to come and take their money.

          “You work for Conservation, right?” said the shortest and stockiest of the three, who otherwise was a carbon copy of the other two in nearly every other way, including a filthy camo cap.

          “No,” answered Jack, “not Conservation.  I’m at the state biology lab that…well…yeah, it’s conservation, I guess.”

          “What’re you doin’ with them binocs?  Spyin’ on people?” said the medium-sized guy with an out-of-control beer gut.

          “Yeah, you spyin’?” said short and stocky.

          “Just watching birds,” replied Jack.

          “Bird watchin’!”  said beer-gut guy.  “What for?  Ya can’t shoot ‘em now.  It ain’t huntin’ season yet.”

          “Yeah, it ain’t huntin’ season,” said short and stocky.

          Jack didn’t respond, but just looked down.  He was beginning to simmer inside, which was not a good thing.  Jack wasn’t a fighter, but he was mulling over which of several biting, sarcastic replies he planned to unleash.

          But before he could say a word, the biggest and tallest of the three said, “Let it go boys.  C’mon, back to work.”  All three were looking directly at Jack, but slowly turned and stomped toward the exit.  Jack turned to watch them leave, and was about to shout out something when Duff put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, who took the hint and said nothing.

          After the lunch hour, business eventually dropped off, and things quieted down again.   Jack and Duff leisurely went through more pitchers, while Jack kept trying to increase the bar’s bird list. Occasional customers came and went, with several sincerely asking about his barstool bird watching.

         As late afternoon approached, Jack said, “That’s enough for me.  I probably shouldn’t drive as it is.”

          “Yeah, I got things to do,” replied Duff.  “Let’s finish up this pitcher.  Then it’s back to reality.”

          As Duff downed the last of his beer, a truck began backing a Jon boat and trailer down the ramp.  Jack was uninterested in this, but Duff watched the driver closely.  “Hey Donnie,” said Duff.  “Ain’t that Matt Morrison?”

          Donal looked up from washing glasses, turned toward the window, and said, “Yeah, that’s him.  He’s ain’t allowed in here; always startin’ trouble with someone more often than not.  Pretty sure he works with those three that were in here earlier.  You boys handled them fine, by the way.  I was watchin’.”  Donal tried to assess the reactions of both men at this news, but detected nothing. 

          Jack appeared not to be listening, taking his time with his last beer while organizing the bird list.  But he looked out the window and watched with interest as the Jon boat quickly moved up the river.  As they stood to leave, Jack said, “Thirty-three species.”

          “A good day’s work,” said Duff.

          “Be careful now,” said Donal.  “You come out here and watch birds any time Jack.  I think it’s good for business.  You’re a lot preferable to the type of scum I’ve had to throw out of here sometimes.”  Emma came out of the kitchen for the first time that afternoon and waved as Jack and Duff left.

          “I seen Matt Morrison go off on the river,” said Emma.  “You know, I wouldn’t doubt that Matt and his buddies have it in for Jack, him being out with Matt’s ex-girlfriend Lizzy in a canoe the other day.  Everything going alright here?”

          “So far, so good.  You know, that Jack is a good guy.  Duff too.”

          “So I hear.”  Emma picked up Jack’s bird list from the bar and said, “What’s this?” as she quickly glanced over the list.  “He seen all them birds out there today?”

          “Yeah.”

          “Huh.”

The Fate of Trees

 

To endure in place what the environment can deliver until it can endure no longer, that is the fate of a tree left to its own devices.  Unless the ending is determined by a decision followed by a screaming chainsaw.  The older trees, wide in girth and well above 50 feet tall, are the ones that draw most of my attention; and there are many of these in Macomb, my adopted town of three years.  It takes a long time, comparable to an average human life span, to reach such a size (an obvious point, but one that cannot be stated often enough).  And that is why it is such a sad event when one of the old ones in town is pushed over by a wind storm, even sadder if it is cut, and especially lamentable when the loss is not replaced by a sapling, but becomes part of a mowed lawn.  

          During each of the years that I have lived in Macomb, quite a few large trees in my neighborhood have been lost.  The derecho of June 29^th—which charged across parts of Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, with its 80- to 100-mile-per-hour straight-line winds—directly felled many, which blocked city streets and brought down power lines.  During the same storm, a much greater number of trees lost small branches, large limbs, or whole sections.  Some have remained as scarred veterans, but work crews would eventually take down the worst of the damaged ones.

          In a city, it’s understandable when large trees that pose a threat to buildings are either greatly trimmed to reduce the threat or removed completely without haste.  Ash trees have been targeted for complete removal because of infestations by the emerald ash borer, which eventually will kill any large ash.  It will not be long before Macomb will be completely free of ash trees.  Large elms have long ago been decimated by Dutch elm disease; but surprisingly, there are at least two healthy large individuals in my small neighborhood and maybe others elsewhere.

          Being oriented toward numbers, I sometimes wonder what my town will look like in so many years with the current rate of tree loss.  Within just one city block of my home, as far as I recall, ten medium- to large-sized trees were taken down in the last three years:  two sugar maples, two oaks, three ashes, one Bradford pear, one river birch, one honey locust.  Of these, nine were purposely felled.  How many of these have been replaced with a sapling?  None, as far as I can tell.  This, of course, says nothing about areas farther than one block from my home, and the rate of 3.3 trees lost per year may not continue.  But two ashes on my block are struggling with the ash borer and will soon be dead, at which point they will be completely removed and disposed of, probably next year.  And I have my eye on two nearby sugar maples with more dead branches than would seem healthy.

          As I travel around town on daily errands or for walks or bike rides, I look forward to seeing specific trees on my routes, like waving at an elderly friend relaxing on his front porch.  They give me a good feeling.  But I also see their problems and struggles:  the massive eastern cottonwood on the west side with  some of its large limbs hanging over a neighboring building; the white ash near the town center, with its base pushing against the sidewalk and curb; a pin oak that has long outgrown its small allotted space between the sidewalk and the street; the beech tree around the corner still free of beech bark disease, which is on its way to Illinois from the East; the eastern hemlock at Compton Park that always causes me to think of Michigan’s north woods and the hemlock woolly adelgid that has caused widespread death of hemlocks within the eastern states.

 

Pin oak growing over the curb, Macomb, Illinois.

 

          The old trees struggling with the effects of age are reminders that the fate of every living thing is to die.  It’s a message I can’t ignore, one that makes me appreciate them that much more and forces me to turn some of my attention toward the next generation.  I’m keeping track of three saplings (pawpaw, red mulberry, redbud) on my personal property that I hope to see some day as medium-sized trees, if the next three decades go well— but not much more beyond that even with a best-case scenario.  My three grandkids, though, have a better chance; they might even see those saplings become trees that reach a mature height.  That scene I see in the only way possible, within my mind’s eye.

 

Dead tree with a honeybee hive inside, Glenwood Park, Macomb, Illinois.

 

A few related posts on The River Landing:

The Last Old Oak

The Acorn Year

Eulogy for an Oak

 

 

Shelter on the Porch

“The …[sky] was angry that day my friends.”—George Costanza

 

It was one of those August days in central Illinois where, weather-wise, anything might happen, except possibly a snowstorm.  The recent heat wave seemed to be officially over, but there was lingering humidity with definite warmth still in the atmosphere that radiated a sort of unstable uneasiness.

          I sat on the edge of Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, that was half mud flats because of low river levels, a normal August condition.  There were shorebirds out there on migration from the high Arctic, replenishing energy levels, resting, and preening—staging for the next big push southward.  I searched the birds for rarities, then gradually noticed the atmosphere toward the northwest, across the river valley, becoming a thicker bluish-gray.  It looked like it might rain, but I didn’t recall rain in the forecast.

 

Quiver Lake bottoms with mud flats, seeps, and open water.

 

          After a while, the gray clouds rather quickly changed to a darker shade, and far off in the distance, maybe five miles, rain fell in a curtain advancing in my direction.  The radar app on my smartphone showed a small, fast-moving system, denoted by red, barreling toward me from the northwest, and I calculated that it would be directly overhead in ten minutes or less.  So without haste, I grabbed my backpack of books, spotting scope, and binoculars, then climbed the bluff side to our cabin’s screened-in front porch.

          Within minutes, the storm abruptly hit in all its fury:  rain pouring from the sky and blasting in with the wind straight off the lake, lightning, thunder, twisting trees, falling leaves, twigs, and branches.  Quite a bit of water shot through the screens onto the carpet and some of the furniture.  I retreated further back from the spray and managed to stay dry, being in the storm and sheltered from it in the same instant.  But within a short time, the wind visibly lessened and the rain became a light dribble, more water falling from the trees than new rain from the sky.  And soon the sun was out again, then hidden again, then out again within the patchy sky. I walked out to the road to watch the isolated storm race eastward, away from the river valley and across the landscape, still dumping rain all the way.

 

The described storm on August 9, 2023, moving eastward.

 

          Steam rose from the road’s surface, adding to the air’s rising humidity, also giving off the unique odor of cool water dropped on warm pavement.  And I was transported back in time almost 60 years as I recalled the exact same smell rising from my Chicago neighborhood’s streets after a short, heavy rain when the sun again reclaimed the day.  We lived in a brick bungalow with a small front porch that was sheltered under the same roof as the rest of the house.  When a storm hit, I enjoyed being on the porch, but if the wind blew toward the house, the porch was no shelter at all.  In any case, I would eventually hear my Czech-born grandmother calling, “Tomáš, come in the house.”  But she would prevail only sometimes.

 

The author's childhood home on Chicago's west side, the mid-1960s.

 

*        *        *

In the city, with so many buildings and sometimes tall trees blocking distances, a storm could be on top of you without warning.  But at the cabin, along the shores of Quiver Lake, or out at the county road, you can see for miles unobstructed.  I once watched a slow-moving system drifting in from the west when everywhere else, the skies were clear.  I could see the rain falling straight down below the storm clouds; there was almost no wind and no lighting or thunder.  It was a friendly rainstorm, bringing needed water for plants struggling in the usual mid-summer drought, but only within its narrow pathway.  When the storm advanced over the lake, I began to see the moving front where raindrops made contact with the lake’s calm surface, and I sat on a log and watched until the rain began to fall around me.  For a moment, I thought, Why leave?  It’s summer after all.  What’s a little water?  If I were a kid, I might have stayed, but the adult in me said, Go back inside to the cabin.  (It’s not the first time I realized that kids can get away with so much more than adults as far as indulging in unusual behavior.)

          Many times I’ve been caught in the rain while hiking on a woodland trail, and I don’t recall ever being in a panic to seek shelter.  Water falling on trees, moistening the ground, flowing down ravine slopes; it’s all part of a vast cycle; and being within it seems like the most natural thing in the world.  Even with a hard rain and thunder.  As for the lightning, if a shelter is nearby, I might be better off following my grandmother’s cautious ways.         

Who Needs Privacy?

We could tell by the number of cars parked outside the Black Dog Bar and Grill that seating would be either limited or unavailable.  “Let’s go.  We’ll never get a booth, let alone a table,” said Julie.

        “We can’t really know unless we try,” I replied.  As we entered, I was immediately disheartened by the large number of people standing around with all of the booths occupied. 

        “Come on,” I said.  “There’s a table in back.”

        As we sat and waited for the waitress to bring menus, the door to the men’s room, about five feet away, flung wide open, providing an unobstructed view of the toilet and urinal.  How appetizing, I thought.  The man who had been in there then proceeded to wash his hands at a sink that was located within the dining area along the wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms.  After he was finished washing, he pulled a plastic lever several times on the overhead paper towel dispenser, dried his hands, and then walked away.

        “Well,” I said, “I guess we’ll know who doesn’t wash his hands.”

        “Gross.  Can we change the subject?”

        It would have been so easy for the owners to install a tall partition in front of the restroom area so the entire establishment would not get a full view each and every time the door opens.  And I knew it was just a matter of time before someone forgot to lock the door while inside taking care of business (it happens all the time).  The sound of the towel dispenser actually made me feel as if I were inside the restroom.  Sometimes I wonder:  Am I wrong?  Do other people notice these things?

        “Is it just me?”  I asked Julie.

        “Well, not really.  It’s a bad design.  But, yes, it’s partly you.”

        “Should I say something?”

        “No.”

 

The Black Dog experience reminded me of a summer writing workshop I attended two decades ago in Washington’s Cascade Mountains.  The workshop was held at a rustic off-season ski lodge with a warning that there would be no frills.  I slept five nights in a sleeping bag on the floor in a crowded dorm room.  Fine.  I’m tough.  Sleep on the floor?  No problem.  I was even prepared to eat on the floor and not complain.

        After checking in and claiming a sleeping area in a remote corner, the first thing I did was to satisfy my curiosity about the bathroom situation.  I wasn’t expecting much, but what I saw in the long, narrow room stopped me cold.  Near the doorway there were several sinks side by side; a single shower was at the far end; and in between the shower and sinks were four toilets in a row separated only by a couple feet of open space!  The shower at least had a curtain.  I imagined trying to use one of those toilets and all that that might involve along with other men brushing their teeth, drying off in the shower, shaving, and casually conversing.  “Anyone get the score on last night’s Yankee game?”

        The workshop included three excellent meals each day as part of the package.  And the chef was not simply a fry cook; he was a highly trained artisan who prepared a variety of unusual dishes with an international flair.  It was all so delicious; at every meal, served buffet style, I left the dining area like a giant swollen tick.  But after two days, with my lower abdominal region basically on strike, I began to wonder:  Where is all this food going? 

        All of it didn’t just dissipate into nothing.  The human intestine might be around 15 feet long, so it could store quite a bit of…uh…material.  But I knew at that moment, a reckoning would soon be upon me, like piles of driftwood building up beneath a bridge on a flooding river.  The river would win and take out the bridge at the same time.  And when it happened, I didn’t want to be three feet away from some guy brushing his teeth.     

        On the third day with no action below the equator, I took the matter into my own hands, traveled to a drugstore at a nearby town, and made a strategically timed visit to a gas station that I had scouted out earlier:  it had a single occupancy restroom with a locking door.  And thus unburdened, I was able to enjoy the rest of the workshop without a care.    

 

Those responsible for the ski lodge must not have thought anyone would have a problem with their restroom layout.  Or maybe they were laughing the whole time about their joke that would be a gift that would keep on giving.  But why be embarrassed about a natural body function that all animals for millions of years have dealt with every day of their lives?  Suddenly, one person (me) has an issue.

        Look at dogs:  they have no shame:  anywhere, anytime, and they’ll look you in the eye, maybe even dog-smiling, as they’re “doing it.”  Pure honesty and guilelessness on full display.  Dogs have many other admirable qualities, and who are we humans to think we are so superior with our pumped up egos and fancy restrooms?  In fact, maybe taking a hint from the dogs is not a bad move.  Mark Twain, a keen observer of humankind and dogs once said: “I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

        I might have to think about this from time to time when I am in a philosophical mood.  The meaning of life, the extent of the universe…whatever.  But I would not want to take it too far.  Julie loves dogs.  But even she has her limits.

 

Big City Compassion

 

After scanning in my beer and bag of potato chips, the cashier at the local convenience store said, “That’ll be $9.97.  Would you like to round it up for a donation to the Children’s Cancer Fund?”

          I thought, Three cents?  That would be a pretty chintzy donation.  I can’t do that.   But the fact is, with high inflation and broken supply chains, I haven’t been feeling so generous in recent years. 

          “Not today,” I replied.  Although she never uttered a sound in response, I could almost hear her thoughts:  What a cheap son of a bitch.

          When she handed me the three cents in change, I grabbed my groceries and waited for the customary “Thank you.”  But after several uncomfortable seconds, her silence told me there would be no “Thank you,” no “Have a nice day.”  So I said, “Thanks,” and left.  Thanks? I asked myself.  For What?  Giving me my change?  Why did I thank her?  I never used to be such a sensitive person.  Could it be that a Post-Pandemic Stress Syndrome let this situation get to me, past my normally thick defensive walls?

           Those protective walls, with an added aura of detachment, are a survival strategy that I attribute to growing up in Chicago.  I’ve seen it in other folks from big cities; it’s what we use to fend off scam artists and other predators.  For example, on any trip to downtown, a person is likely to be approached at least once by someone asking for money:  “Can you loan me a dollar?”  When this happens, you don’t slow down, and you definitely do not stop or engage the person in conversation.  You simply keep walking, eyes facing forward.  A firm “No!” might be allowed, but you’re better off not saying anything.  Any hesitation will be viewed as weakness.  As the late Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, once said, “Weakness is provocative.”  Now, this may seem crass, but the alternative would be to “loan” out money willy-nilly with absolutely no hope of ever seeing it again. 

           How far should this attitude be taken?  I once saw a man crawling along the sidewalk during a typical busy downtown Chicago morning; over and over he shouted, “Help me, help, someone help!”  Every person who passed, and there were many, stepped around him and kept on walking, not even slackening their pace; and this made me wonder if he was a daily fixture in the neighborhood.  Maybe he was not really in dire need of assistance; maybe he was only waiting for a person soft-hearted enough to “lend” him money.  Eventually, that person would come along, and he knew it.  I once read an article about street people begging for money; in one example, the article told of a street person who actually lived in a nice suburban home; the “job” he commuted to every day was begging for money in the streets of downtown.  One must always be wary of scam artists, especially in a big city.  And so, you walk on, so does everyone else, and you’re an invisible, anonymous part of the compassionless crowd.

          Now, take that same person with the hard exterior shell out of Chicago and place him in a small town.  Suddenly, he doesn’t blend in as well.  Just one example may suffice.  Over fifteen years ago, my newly-wed wife Julie and I were walking from a parking area toward a venue to hear a lecture— on birds and nature, I believe—at a small Sangamon River town in central Illinois.  As we walked along, I could see further ahead at one of the building’s entrances that an old woman was lying on the ground near the door.  I quietly said to Julie, motioning with my hand, “Go around to the other door.”  Julie, who grew up in a small town, looked at me with shock and maybe a bit of derision, saying, “No, we have to help her!”  And she quickly left my side to help the old woman, who by now had two other folks about to help.  So the situation’s being taken care of, I thought.  But Julie proceeded onward, with me reluctantly following.  And wouldn’t you know it, Julie actually knew the woman!  Later I tried to explain how I had been conditioned in the big city to avoid scam artists who fake illnesses, and if you get involved with someone else’s accident, you’re opening up yourself to a lawsuit.  Yes, I’m a victim.  But Julie just responded by saying, “She wasn’t scamming anyone for money; she’s an old woman who fell and needed help!  They took her to Emergency at the hospital.”  I remember thinking at the time that it was a good thing we were married and not simply engaged to be married.

           Although I have been away from Chicago for over three decades, and I worry about softening, I believe at least the foundations of my social interaction skills have remained intact, despite occasionally questioning my own reactions to certain situations.  For instance, there was the time I witnessed a man’s car running out of gas in the center of a major intersection in Murphysboro in southern Illinois.  I stood observing the situation from inside a nearby corner gas station, about 200 feet from the stranded car, with a few people ahead of me in line.  The twenty-something driver, a Pillsbury Doughboy sort of man with baggy sweatpants, ran with two large empty gas containers to the pumps and then entered the station in a panic after seeing the long line of customers waiting to pay.  He begged and pleaded to be allowed to cut in line.  Of course, the cashier let him go ahead of everyone else.  No one complained.  I briefly wondered why he had two gas cans, where one, with just a bit of gas, would have been sufficient to get his car moving, at which point he could have then driven to a gas pump for more.  I began to think this man was a bit lacking in some common sense.

           After he paid for his fuel, he quickly ran for his car, struggling all the while with the obviously heavy containers of fuel, one in each hand.  It was at that point I noticed his sweatpants were quite a bit lower on his waist than when I first saw him.  And as he ran, just as I thought his pants might fall down, they did, indeed, give way to the earth’s gravitational pull:  to his ankles, entangling his feet, and abruptly and quickly tripping him up.  The gas containers went flying as he lurched forward, all the way to the ground, face forward.  I thought, Good thing he was wearing underwear.

           As I stood in line, the thought occurred to me that maybe I should have offered to help him carry the gas back to his car.  Since no one else in this small-town gas station offered help, on that point my conscious remained clear.  This man, I remember thinking at the time, was more than just unlucky; he probably had that kind of thing happen to him all the time (maybe minus the pants falling down), going through life, as he was, without much common sense.  I simply could not feel sorry for him, even if he was Jesus in disguise.  And if I had helped him, I would have lost my place in line.  And for what?  To be his enabler, so he would never learn common sense.  But at least I became undetached enough to think about helping. 

           Maybe on my next visit to a convenience store, I’ll donate three cents to whatever charity they’re promoting.  No, let’s round it up to a nickel.

 

When to Give Up: Chronicle of a Cormorant Colony

 

“…there’s no success like failure, and…failure’s no success at all”—from the song Love Minus Zero/No Limit by Bob Dylan

 

On a mid-April visit to our cabin at Quiver Lake, near Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, I was looking for signs of the advancing season, such as flowering plants and bird sightings.  Then, over the brisk winds blowing off the lake, there came, from the flooded black willow forest across the lake, the unmistakable guttural sounds of double-crested cormorants.  They were re-establishing their nesting colony of the previous year, which had failed for unknown reasons by early May; they simply left, all of the nests abandoned.

      This year I vowed to keep better track of the situation.  I was not sure when the colony became active again, but it was definitely not active two weeks before this recent cabin visit.  So, with eight weeks or more for egg incubation and time to fledge, I was expecting to see and hear a lot of cormorant activity this year.  When conditions were right, I would canoe over to the colony for a closer look.

      But by my next visit on May 4^th, the cormorants had already abandoned the colony!  I kept hoping that I was wrong and that they were all out foraging for fish, but if that were the case, I should have seen cormorants coming and going.  During the intervening days since the last cabin visit, the Illinois River had dropped quite a bit, and since the river is connected to Quiver Lake, the lake level had also fallen.  I wondered if the dry ground under the colony had given predators, such as raccoons, easy access to the nests.  Was that the reason the cormorants abandoned their colony?  I wanted to take a closer look, but time and opportunity did not converge until twelve days later.

 

***

Cottonwood seeds floated in the air like a light snow flurry and this year’s crop of silver maple seedlings grew well during the longer days of mid-May, in some areas forming lines parallel to the lakeshore, marking a previous high-water level.  The river itself had probably already hit its peak spring flood, and would be slowly falling toward its normal summer low period, but that would only be an average expectation; another big flood would not really be surprising.

      At the lake’s shoreline, I was surrounded by vigorous bird songs and calls from house wrens, warbling vireos, Carolina wrens, Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and bobwhite quail.  Yellow-billed cuckoos had already arrived, which for me signaled the end of the spring migration, but there were still some Tennessee warblers passing through on their way to the boreal forests of Canada.  Buffalo gnats were becoming annoying—as they always are in May—but to endure them, I reminded myself of the fact that insects of all kinds are the protein source needed to grow healthy nestlings that must be ready to fly before too long.  All of these environmental cues together formed the backdrop to the advancing bird breeding season, and I imagined those cues to be a strong reinforcement of the drive to reproduce.  And yet, the cormorants abandoned their colony.  I launched my canoe with little delay, and in the time it took for only a few strokes of the paddle, I was on the far side of the lake, heading for the failed cormorant colony.

      It was almost like a dystopian scene, with all of the abandoned nests in surrounding trees appearing newly rehabilitated but completely unused.  An active colony would be chaotic, with tree branches and leaves covered in bird droppings and messes.  It seemed like such a waste, after going through all of the trouble to migrate to Illinois and then assemble at this particular location, to engage in numerous flights back and forth to gather so much nesting material of twigs and larger sticks, and then, somehow collectively to make the decision to give up and leave.  How would they even communicate such a decision throughout the colony?  I can imagine some individual birds giving up and moving on for whatever reason, and some birds staying, but for all of them to leave, there must have been a compelling reason.

 

Abandoned double-crested cormorant colony at Quiver Lake, 16 May 2023

 

      Was it, in fact, predation?  Or could they have been somehow harassed into leaving?  In some circles, the fish-eating double-crested cormorant is not a popular bird.  It’s curious that the colony was abandoned two years in a row.  And a similar sequence of events happened in 2019:  There was an active cormorant colony by the third week of April, and it was abandoned sometime between then and the middle of May.  Before that, since 2011 when we acquired our cabin, either there was not a colony at Quiver Lake bottoms or I never noticed one if it was there.

      In the end, double-crested cormorant colonies will succeed somewhere and fail elsewhere, maybe more failures than successes.  Otherwise, the population might grow exponentially to the point where we would have so many cormorants (individuals live for six years on average), a population crash— related to an increase in diseases and overexploitation of habitat and food resources—would be inevitable.  Their reproductive drive accounts for failure.  That’s why each pair usually raises three or four young each year, sometimes with two broods.  As another example:  Why does a cottonwood tree produce so many seeds, when most of them never germinate?  How many years must go by before even one makes it into a tree?  What would the landscape look like if all of the seeds each year grew into trees?  At any rate, it seems that the Quiver Lake cormorant colony might be due for success.  For this year, though, they’ve apparently run out of time.

 

References

Dorr, B.S., K.L. Sullivan, P.D. Curtis, R.B. Chipman, and R.D. McCullough.  2016.  Double-crested cormorants.  Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series.  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services.

Kleen, V.M., L. Cordle, and R.A. Montgomery.  2004.  The Illinois breeding bird atlas.  Illinois Natural History Survey Special Publication No. 26.  xviii + 459 pp.

Serious Business

It was a classic mid-winter morning, with a dull, light grayness reflecting off the cloudy sky and the neighborhood scene unenthusiastic in its muted colors.  Though last night’s dusting of snow had already melted on the streets, most of it held on tightly to the dormant lawns.  With temperatures barely above freezing, the damp air seemed much colder, capable of snuffing out a fire, easily dissipating a body’s life.  But I had already spent too much time in the house this winter.  So, to see truly what the world had to offer, I ventured out.

          Soon a train’s whistle loudly rang out from the north part of town, and in my mind’s eye, I could see its massive engines pulling a string of graffiti-covered cars past Macomb’s downtown depot and Forgottonia Brewing.  A semi-truck along East Jackson Street roared and grunted its complaints as its driver shifted through the gears.  Distant crows called and a momentary Carolina wren’s song caught my attention.  What was it doing, singing on such a day?  But after walking a block to Killjordan Creek and Macomb’s Compton Park, a chill remained, with any new internal warmth quickly lost to the wind.  There were few hikers and dog walkers on this particular morning, and I liked it better that way.  Still, I picked up the pace, even as I wished to linger.

          At the far end of the park, I crossed the creek at South Pearl Street, and, much too soon, began heading toward home.  But here I took special notice of the creek’s natural meanders, with repeating patterns of curved collapsing banks opposite areas of alluvial deposition, which park managers attempt to limit—this inevitable tendency of all flowing waters.  But this is what I look for on my walks:  the unmanaged, natural processes, behaviors, and interactions, even the smallest examples.

 

 Killjordan Creek at Compton Park, Macomb, Illinois.

 

          At a private birdfeeder near the park, I saw a black-capped chickadee cautiously dart in on a flash, grab a seed, and then quickly fly off to shelter within a neatly trimmed ornamental shrub.  All in seconds.  They are fast and wary.  The feeder and seeds were, of course, provided by the homeowner; but as a species, the chickadee’s essential behaviors are innate, successfully honed over the millennia by trial and error—even, but especially, the wariness.  For the survivors, that is.

          As my block came within sight, a quick movement caught my eye:  a Cooper’s hawk, predator of birds, landing on a lower branch of a pin oak tree.  And then I noticed all other birds were scarce, keeping a low profile, quiet.  A few days before, this very hawk, most likely, aggressively pursued and caught a dark-eyed junco that sought refuge in our backyard quince bush…next to the birdfeeder.  The hawk kept grabbing into the bush with its powerful talons.  Then, a slightly misjudged countermovement, and the junco was no more.

          Serious business in the neighborhood.  Parents driving their kids to school and special events, bringing them back home; folks going to work and back, on shopping trips to the grocery store; the regular house-to-house mail delivery; a UPS truck, a FedEx truck; garbage collection every Thursday; clearing snow from roads, driveways, and sidewalks; walkers with their dogs; a chattering fox squirrel as I walk past; keeping bird feeders filled.  The routines of everyday living.

 

Birding for the Crested Caracara and Reexamining Priorities

 

Immediately after the car’s engine started, The Eels’ song “I Like Birds” came over the stereo.  This is one of the signature songs from my favorite movie, The Big Year.  My wife Julie and I were off on a quest:  to find a bird called the crested caracara that had recently been seen (February 10, 2023) at the Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour east of our home.

        Julie recognized the song from the movie that we had seen at least five times over the last couple of years.   She smiled and asked, “Did you purposely put on this song?” 

        “Well, yeah, it seemed appropriate.  We’re kind of doing a Bostick-like thing today.” 

        Kenny Bostick is one of the main characters in The Big Year.  He gives up nearly everything in his life, including his marriage, in a competition with other serious birders to see who can find the highest number of bird species within a calendar year.  In order to accomplish this goal, he has to chase after rarities all over the U.S., especially when a rarity is reported by other birders on rare bird hotlines.  If he wasn’t just a movie character, Bostick would be traveling to the Emiquon Refuge to seek out the crested caracara, a large falcon that is typically found in the U.S. only in parts of Texas, Florida, the Gulf Coast, and far southern Arizona.  Seeing one in Illinois is a big deal, a sighting not likely to happen again for a long time.

        On our way to the Emiquon area, we saw thousands upon thousands of snow geese all over the skies of Fulton County.  And just east of Table Grove, an entire farm field of corn stubble was covered by a dense flock of snow geese that extended for what seemed like a half mile and that came almost right up to the highway.

        “You know, if we stopped to take a picture, they would all fly,” said Julie.  She knew what I was thinking.

        “Yeah, they’re very jittery.  Just about anything can make them all take flight at once, screaming their heads off the whole time.  And then they’ll circle around several times in a giant cloud, and all come back down to the same place where they started out from.  It seems to me that they waste a lot of energy.  So what does that say about 'optimal foraging theory?'”  Julie just looked at me, about to roll her eyes, as I struggled against entering “lecture mode.”

        As we passed through Lewistown, I tried to drive slower and pay more attention to any large birds in flight or perching in treetops.  We were close to the Illinois River valley and the Emiquon Refuge and Nature Preserve.  I was fairly confident of seeing the caracara when we started out on our trip, but as I witnessed the vastness of the river valley before me, I knew that we were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

        “This place is so big,” I said.  “Where should we look first?  I know, look for the birders.  When you see a big group of them, you’ll be able to tell by their behavior if they’ve found the caracara.  If they’re all intensely looking in the same direction through spotting scopes, they’ve got something good; if they’re all standing around talking, with each birder looking in a different direction, they haven’t found it.”

        “Or we can just ask,” replied Julie. 

        “Yeah, well…we could do that too.”

        Then we saw several cars parked along a gravel lane not far from the main highway.  “Look! Birders!” I nearly shouted.  “I’ll drive past them, and all you have to do is roll down your window, look them straight in the eyes, and say ‘crested caracara’ like it’s a secret password.  But realize, in any other context, you would look like a lunatic.”  To our disappointment, though, none of the birders had yet seen the caracara.  But the previous day, it was sighted in that exact spot, which is why the birders were gathered there.  So we drove onward, thinking that we had as much chance of seeing the bird there as anywhere.

        Further away on another gravel road, a car came toward us from the opposite direction.  I slowed to a crawl, opened the window, and made a sign for the other car to stop, which it obligingly did.  And I simply said, “caracara?”  The driver kind of smirked, but said “no” in a suspicious sort of way, as if he actually had seen the bird but did not wish to reveal that fact, keeping the information to himself so that he and only he could count the bird, and thereby beat out his birding competitors by one species on the 2023 list of elite Illinois birders.  But no, that’s crazy talk, I thought.  Or was it?

        At the Emiquon Nature Preserve observatory, a quite friendly, talkative older woman approached us while walking her three highly energetic, unleashed dogs.  I felt relief that she wasn’t angry, as one of her pets had just barely escaped being run over by my car. 

        “What’re you all lookin’ for?” she asked.

        “A crested caracara,” I curtly answered while adjusting my spotting scope.  “A crusted…what?  Wait, I’ll look it up on my phone,” she replied.

        “No, it’s crested, crested caracara,” said Julie.  “It’s rare around here.” 

        “Oh,” she replied. And then we heard quite a few details about her personal life and religious interests before she and the dogs went happily on their way.

        After that encounter, we drove around a bit more within the Emiquon area on the gravel backroads and on the state highway that sits on top of a narrow levee with no shoulder to speak of:  a very dangerous situation for birders who are prone to stop with no warning if they see a bird with even the slightest possibility of it being a rarity.  And I began to realize that we probably would not see the caracara.

        “You know,” I sadly said, “yesterday was really the day for seeing this bird.  Birders came from Chicago, and they saw it, according to the internet birding hotlines.” 

        Julie gave me a rather strange look.

        “I’m not making this up!  They’re the hotshot birders, though; they always see the rarities.  I guess we shouldn’t have waited, but I had to take my 96-year-old mother to the cardiologist!  You know, she does have an aortic aneurysm that’s about to explode.”

        Julie turned to face me and raised her eyebrows.

        “Still,” I continued, “I’ll bet we would have seen the bird if I had canceled her doctor’s appointment.  Next time…well, never mind.”  And we headed to Havana, across the Illinois River, for lunch.

 

Into the Wind

The essay Into the Wind appears in Shark Reef:  A Literary Magazine (Issue 41 Winter 2023) (click on the link).  It is a narrative about certain unusual life experiences with wind and relating those times to a recent move from rural surroundings in Mason County, Illinois, to the university town of Macomb, Illinois.  

We left our country home in good hands, as this video (click on this link) by the new owner demonstrates.

 

A tornado moving along the Illinois River valley on Dec. 1, 2018.

 

Windy day at Lake Michigan, Warren Dunes, Michigan.

  

With the Wind at My Back

 

If the wind is at your back and you never turn around
You may never know the wind is there
You may never hear the sound—from the song Ignorance and Privilege by John Gorka

Hey Woody Guthrie, where are you?  The big dogs are back at the door—from the song Woody Guthrie by Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon)

 

For more than a week, the Illinois River’s depth had been gradually falling toward its usual late summer low-water levels.  But in the last few days, it had risen somewhat, and so I took out the canoe across Quiver Lake to the river for what might have been my last chance for a while, before the lake would become unnavigable as a mosaic of shallow water and mud flats.  The weather was clear and warm, and with light early morning breezes, the trip out was easy.  Later in the day, winds would blow stronger.

          Where Quiver Lake connects with the river, I waited for a towboat-barge to pass, took a photograph with my smartphone, and posted it on Facebook.  The towboat’s wake could be dangerous; usually, though, the waves are not a cause for panic in a canoeist, only something to pay attention to.  High in the sky over the river, a large flock of American white pelicans soared in a tight, slowly winding and rising column, reminding me of the DNA molecule’s double helix; sometimes bald eagles and hawks join the pelicans.  But before I could get a better look, the canoe started bouncing in the towboat’s waves, and I realized it was time to get serious about crossing the river.

 

An Illinois River scene near the entrance to Quiver Lake, Mason County, Illinois.

 

          On the river’s opposite muddy bank, I beached the canoe and then pulled it onto higher ground, well out of range of any huge swells that would be created by a v-bottomed yacht, should one pass by.  Nearby was a large silver maple tree that leaned at about the same angle as my living room chair; so, here in the shade I placed two PFDs (personal floatation devices) from the canoe as a back rest.  And with my day campsite completed, I settled in for reading, journaling, observing life along the river, and, after a while, lunch.

          Birds were noticeably less vocal than they had been only a few weeks earlier, but just as I made a mental note of that fact, a Bell’s vireo sounded off from a thicket of willows and swamp privet only a few feet away; then I immediately saw the bird in clear view, even without binoculars.  And I thought that only a fellow birdwatcher would appreciate how unusual this easy sighting was, the Bell’s vireo being notoriously difficult to locate in its preferred thick, shrubby habitats, even while its song tauntingly rings out, almost like mocking the observer. 

          I have no idea what other birders might reflect upon at such times.  But my thoughts usually include recognition of how fortunate I have been to be able to do such things purely for my own pleasure and how life’s circumstances have led me to such a moment.

          If certain decisions had not been made years before I was born, my situation today could easily have been quite different—if, in fact, I would have existed at all.  What if my maternal grandparents had chosen not to leave Czechoslovakia in the early 1920s for America?  During the military occupation of that country during World War II, Nazis guards threw my grandfather’s brother, Jarda Zelizko, to his death from a speeding train.  Would my grandfather have had a similar fate if he had stayed?  Or maybe a version of me would have lived in Czechoslovakia or Poland under communist domination and oppression for decades until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.  I don’t imagine canoeing and birding would have been encouraged during those times. 

          In 1945, the man who would become my father was in the U.S. Navy on his way to the invasion of Imperial Japan, when the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima effectively ended the war, saving him from whatever fate might have awaited.  A few years later, in Chicago, he met the woman who would become my mother, and a few years after that, I came into this world—1957, the same year, in fact, that the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite, which further intensified the Cold War and set off the Space Race, rapidly increasing the pace of new developments in rocket and computer technology as well as their military applications.

          I remember in the 1980s, the scientist Carl Sagan musing about why we have not detected or been contacted by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.  Maybe, he thought, we’re alone in the Universe.  On the other hand, he suggested it could be that many such civilizations get started, but none make it very far beyond the point of discovering how to harness the power in the atom:  they all soon blow themselves up in massive nuclear wars.  So far, we’ve survived only seventy-seven years with nuclear weapons; there have already been several close calls; and the world seems never to have a shortage of new tyrants just waiting to seize power, who would like nothing better than to acquire those same weapons of mass destruction.  In many ways, the world is more dangerous than ever before.  And the big dogs, never really vanquished, are, indeed, back at our door.

 

At this point, it may seem that the stream of consciousness beginning with a Bell’s vireo on a mid-summer canoe trip has meandered a long way off from that observation, but I think the distance is not at all far.  I am not ignorant of history, of why I am here and others are not; and I see no reason to feel guilty because of possessing that knowledge, that awareness of being privileged and where it came from.  Being aware of it is highly important; and thinking about it for a time is sufficient acknowledgement in my view, and that is why I do it.  And yet, others may feel the need to do something more, like raise awareness or give back somehow (usually with money), and that is fine.

         For my part, by the time I was ready to leave my comfortable shade tree for the river, the wind had picked up considerably, just as the forecast had predicted.  And it blew from the northwest, just as predicted, while I would be paddling to the southeast and then eastward back to my small cabin on the bluffs overlooking Quiver Lake.  A stiff wind would be at my back most of the way, making it an easy float trip, while still remaining alert to any sudden wind shifts or unpredictable gusts.

 

Return to a Hill Prairie

“When greenery goes out of the landscape in autumn, a haze of bright, ruddy color lies over most of the hills on the east side of the river…and over remnants of prairie which have resisted the plow.”—from the book River World by Virginia S. Eifert, 1959

 

Attorney and writer Edgar Lee Masters’ (1868-1950) relates in his book, The Sangamon, published in 1942, that when his grandmother first looked northward toward the Mason County Hills in the late 1840s, she was saddened.  This central Illinois landscape was wild and uncultivated, and she wanted to see a settled land with farmsteads, accented here and there with well-kept homes.  The hill prairies on high bluffs over the Sangamon River valley also might have conjured up visions of a not so distant past when the land was occupied by a native race of people, a culture alien to her that embraced those same hills as home and as a source of sustenance.  That same location today, though, might have her smile, as the land has become dominated by intensive row-crop agriculture, exuding prosperity; but she may also wonder why those hill prairies are still there.

 

 

          In The Sangamon, Masters often writes of Illinois’ prairies as expansive landscape features; he even writes a poem about prairies, but fails even once to explicitly mention the comparatively small hill prairies which his grandmother as well as he would have witnessed on the steep Sangamon River bluffs.  It would be 1955 before the state of Illinois would publish Robert A. Evers’ landmark study, Hill Prairies of Illinois.  So to be fair, probably not too many people were thinking about such things with the Great Depression tenaciously holding on while another world war seemed inevitable.  As far as The Sangamon is concerned, apparently more impressive to Masters than the hill prairies were certain eccentric personalities of the locality, who now seem to be of little consequence other than adding a bit of color to his narrative; and yet, he devotes considerable space in the book to such individuals.  But today, as one looks toward the Sangamon River bluffs, those hill prairies are the only original prairies left in view; it would be difficult not to notice them, even for a person uninterested in such things.

 

The Sangamon River, bottomlands, and distant Revis

Hill Prairie Nature Preserve on the Mason County Hills,2012.  

 

Just over three decades ago, I first visited Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve (422.8 acres), north of where Salt Creek enters the Sangamon River.  There were no trails that I could see, and maps were not offered; so I pushed through the brush at the prairie’s edge and began a steep 200-foot climb along a narrow ridge of prairie, with woods on either side, to the top of the bluff.  Here I found a place to sit and lean against the hillside, on what could only be referred to as a natural sofa, looking out upon the prairie ridges, surrounding forests, flatlands of the river bottoms, and southward toward the uplands of Menard County with modern no-nonsense farms.  These prairies, I thought, had been there for a long time, an original landscape that existed from well into the deep past. The thought held my attention; I felt as if I had stepped out of a time machine, and I looked closely around me at the loess soil, little bluestem, side oats grama, big bluestem, indiangrass, lead plant, and more.  A gentle breeze blew from the south, enabling turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks to soar on updrafts overhead, but sometimes at eye level.  With the wind blowing through nearby oak trees, the only sound I heard was rustling leaves, the nearest highway being far removed from this preserve in a remote part of a remote county.  I would return here many times over the next three decades, but that first visit will always stand out from the rest.

 

Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve, early 1990s.

 

Loess ridge at Revis Hill Prairie, early 1990s.

 

        For someone who grew up within the old neighborhoods of Chicago and Cicero—with its paved streets, concrete sidewalks, sewer systems, mowed front lawns, and blocks of bungalows, each small house separated from the next by only a few feet—a mindset was ingrained in me early on that most of what surrounded me had been put there by someone, designed and managed to look and function a certain way.  That may be why at an early age I was already drawn to what I perceived as unmanaged landscapes such as the Chicago area’s forest preserves, especially those along the Des Plaines River.  After being free in the forest preserves for an afternoon, returning to the rectangular blocks and sidewalks of our city neighborhood felt like being put into a cage.  That feeling is still with me every day, and I know that it is one of the reasons why I am still drawn to natural areas, particularly those within the Illinois Nature Preserve System.

        At some point, though, I became aware that natural areas had to be managed to maintain their characteristics, which, in a way, suggests a contradiction in terms.  Of course, there are many issues that require this to be necessary, including but not limited to invasive plants that can quickly overrun even a supposedly pristine area, successional changes in plant communities that evolved with frequent fire, decline of species due to habitat fragmentation, and species populations falling below some minimum viable size.  When I began working for the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission several years after my first visit to Revis Hill Prairie, I had long been aware that my precious natural areas were not unmanaged as I had once thought, but actually were among some of the most managed lands in the state, with activities such as prescribed fires, brush and tree removal from prairies and savannas, seed collection and distribution, herbicide treatment of invasive plants, and, in some cases, reintroductions of rare plants and animals.  Being actively involved in these activities on a professional level permanently altered the way I would view a natural area; and that became clear to me one day as I realized that instead of closely looking at a tree to admire its beauties in shape, color, and texture, I would be thinking of the best way to drop it safely using a chain saw—where to place the initial cut, how the tree was naturally leaning, and how it would fall and on what.

        Management at every natural area, though, seems to be always running behind the needs; at the same time, it is also important to monitor the effects of management or lack thereof.  Part of the monitoring process is simply to visit a preserve for a close look with a critical eye.  Was the natural area beginning to look the way it was originally envisioned when it was entered into the system?  Were we making progress or falling behind?  Were there any new challenges?  Eventually, even when visiting a preserve on my own time, purely for pleasure, I found it difficult not to make mental lists of issues that needed attention.  There were always issues, even at the best sites.  But even so, I always took a few moments to reflect upon the meaning behind these protected natural areas and to recall why it was that I was initially drawn to them.  If I had ever lost sight of that, then my tasks would have become routine and mechanical, like a musician merely playing the correct notes, but not feeling the music.

 

                                        *      *     *

This past September, I took advantage of an opportunity to visit Revis Hill Prairie with the Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves, a new group formed to help with the management of nature preserves, especially using volunteers.  It was my first visit to Revis since just after my retirement over four years before, and I was curious to see how the site had fared over the interim.  There were several folks from the Friends group on the field trip and also a few former colleagues.  We climbed the bluffs so well known to me and then gathered to discuss familiar management issues and the challenges of applying consistent follow-up.  As in past times, it’s still a matter of how to accomplish what everyone knows is necessary to preserve a natural area.  I listened closely, but said little, interested more in what others, especially the new folks, had to say.

Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve, 26 October 2022, looking

back toward the direction of the previous 1990s photograph. 

 

        A lot has happened since my first visit to Revis Hill Prairie, illustrating just how long a time it has been:  Thirty years ago, Seinfeld was a new program on network television, the Internet was not yet available to the public, George H.W. Bush was still struggling through the final years of what would be his only term as president, the Soviet Union was collapsing, the 911 terrorist attack was still a decade away and now is over two decades behind, and few spoke of the possibility of a deadly pandemic capable of touching every corner of our modern world.  And I now have the benefit of the type of long-term perspective that only an older person can truly possess, appreciate, and learn from.  Even three decades, though, is nothing compared to how long those prairies on the Mason County Hills have existed.  I have a good feeling about them.  For as Masters once wrote:

        To contemplate the prairie is

        To fathom time, to guess at infinite space,

        To find the Earth-spirit in a dreaming mood.

 

References

Evers. Robert A.  1955.  Hill Prairies of Illinois.  Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin, Volume 26, Article 5.

Masters, Edgar Lee.  1988.  The Sangamon.  University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.

Prairie State Conservation Coalition.  I-View (arcgis.com) accessed 11 October 2022.

 

Related Posts on The River Landing

Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve:  A 30-year Perspective on Meanings and Change

Change and Comfort in Nature

Hill Prairie Photo Gallery

Protecting Hopewell Hill Prairies, Marshall County, Illinois

An Illinois River Hill Prairie Fire

 

 

Four Decades of Mark Twain and His River

 “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise”—Mark Twain

“There was a time when my heart was free to wander.”—from The Hobo Song by John Prine

 

During the middle 1980s, while employed at a small college, I shared an office with a man named Bill Andrey.  We both had full teaching loads, but we rarely talked about our work.  Bill liked to reminisce about his life, which included a tour of duty in the Philippines during World War II, and discuss current events, sociology, politics, and literature.  Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was one of his favorite authors.  When I mentioned to Bill that I had never read a book by Twain, he replied that my education was incomplete; and then he proceeded to tell me all that he knew about this individual.

 

 

        Up until that point in time, I had never thought about Mark Twain.  My only familiarity with him was from two old movies that I had seen as a child:  Tom Sawyer and The Prince and the Pauper.   Bill, though, enlightened me, and spoke of Twain’s extensive world traveling and the many jobs that he had tried before becoming a successful author, which included printer, riverboat pilot, silver miner, miller, and newspaper reporter.  Bill, who had been a devoted, domesticated family man for many decades, spoke with envy of Mark Twain’s life, which I interpreted as a regret that his life had never been and would never be as adventuresome.   He then pointed to a picture of Mark Twain on his bulletin board with a quote that read, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  I was intrigued with this unconventional character, and I told Bill that I would look up Mark Twain the next time I was in a book store.  At the same time, being only in my late twenties, with a strong wanderlust daily pulling at me, hearing of Twain’s adventures made me feel as if I should have been doing a lot more with my life, such as going somewhere far away, taking chances, having those exciting experiences that I would one day want to look back upon and perhaps write about.  Maybe, I thought, Mark Twain was just what I needed.

        The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Charles Neider, editor) seemed a good place to start.  Here, I expected to read about all of his adventures, especially when he was a young man, before he became prosperous, married, and settled as a parent.  But I soon discovered that The Autobiography is not organized as a strictly chronological narrative; it is like a series of recollections, opinions, and observations, not always put into context, but presented in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way.  This made it difficult to trace a coherent path through the man’s life.  Also, Twain often simply refers to his adventures by pointing the reader toward his other books rather than re-telling stories.  So for a reader unfamiliar with the author’s life or books, The Autobiography leaves one with many gaps, questions, and some confusion about the order of events in his life.  Most of it was written while he was in his late sixties and early seventies with an old man’s perspective, which made it difficult for me to relate to.  I was young, and I wanted to look forward to my future and be inspired by adventure, not be drawn toward despair as if my life was about over.  Even so, Twain’s humor and unique talent at telling a story are quite intact throughout the book, and those were the qualities that kept me interested in pursuing more of his writings.

 

 

        Over the next couple of decades, I gradually read most of Twain’s major and minor works plus several biographies.  And by chance, at times my life truly crossed paths with his.  In 1985, I was on my way from the Missouri Ozarks to northwestern Illinois for a campout at Mississippi Palisades State Park.  While passing through Florida, Missouri, I saw a sign that announced a nearby visitor’s center with the actual birthplace cabin of Mark Twain.  The broken down, old cabin was not much to look at; but it was the authentic structure, so I was impressed by that.  Then realizing that I was not far from Hannibal, it was natural that I would stop to see Twain’s boyhood home and the scene for his famous books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  A few years later, I was passing through Elmira, New York, on my way to Cornell University in Ithaca, when I saw a small sign beside the road directing the traveler to Mark Twain’s grave; of course, I followed the arrows and signs, and soon I was standing at his very gravesite.  And I thought how strange and coincidental it was that not long before I had stood at this man’s birthplace—both unplanned visits.

        I returned to the Mississippi River many times at various locations since first becoming interested in Mark Twain—from canoeing its wild backwater sloughs in the Driftless Area north of Savanna, Illinois; to wilderness camping alone on seven-mile-long Long Island, about 20 miles upriver from Hannibal, where in the dark of night I heard a pack of barking, marauding dogs not far away, and thought of how that sound would have invoked terror in an escaped slave, who might have used that exact island to make it to the free state of Illinois from slave-holding Missouri; to standing on the levee at New Madrid, in Missouri’s Bootheel region, where locals tell of frequently hearing loud bangs and “bombs” going off under the ground, reminders that the massive earthquake of 1812 was not really that long ago and could again occur; to a road trip from Lake Itasca, source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, as far south as Nauvoo, Illinois, following as close to the river as decent roads would allow.  (This road trip we plan to pick up one day and follow the river the rest of its way to the Gulf of Mexico.)

        One year I was leading a research crew studying the effects of severe flooding on the forests along the Mississippi River.  In Life on the Mississippi, Twain had this to say of floods:  “A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.”  In some of our study areas, so many trees died from being under water during the growing season that the scenes we witnessed seemed like winter, but with green ground cover.  To collect information for later analysis, we tramped through many of the larger islands across from Hannibal, the very islands, perhaps, explored by the real life Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (who actually was the boy, Sam Clemens), or at least similar ones in similar locations.  By then I had read all of Twain’s travel books and most of his novels, so I kind of felt as if we were treading upon sacred ground for a Twain enthusiast.

        Eleven years later, my wife Julie and I were celebrating our first wedding anniversary in Hannibal at an old nineteenth century home renovated as a bed and breakfast.  The next morning we took a riverboat cruise from the Hannibal dock, and I was able to enjoy Mark Twain’s river as a tourist, without having to concern myself with collecting scientific data, leading a field crew, or watching out for shallow water or wing dams (piles of rock oriented perpendicular to the bank) just below the surface.

        This year (2022), on our sixteenth anniversary, we enjoyed a luncheon cruise on the same riverboat that floated off from the same Hannibal dock as on our first anniversary.  The river and its islands seemed to have not changed at all in the intervening years.  But I knew that that could really not be the case, because forests and rivers are always changing, although over the short term, change can be subtle.  Still, I’m not sure how much of today’s Mississippi River Mark Twain would recognize, especially with its lock and dam system and leveed floodplain.

 

The Mississippi River at Hannibal, Mo., from a riverboat, July 24, 2022.

 

The Mississippi River at Hannibal, Mo., blufftop view, July 24, 2022.

 

        While planning our recent anniversary visit to the Mississippi at Hannibal, I decided it was time to re-read The Autobiography of Mark Twain, now as an older man closer to the age of Twain when he dictated much of it.  And unlike my first time through, I immediately connected with its narrative, as I looked back on my life of 64 years along with Twain looking back on his.  And when he referred to one of his books, I easily recalled the book and the impressions it made upon me at the time that I read it.  That an autobiography could encompass an entire life of seventy plus years within 380 pages and take mere weeks to read, I found to be humbling; making the average human lifespan, including my own, seem as quick as the flash of a firefly on a warm summer’s evening.  Not surprisingly, there is profound sadness in that thought, especially for an older person, and I see that in Twain as he looked back on his life to craft his autobiography.

 

I’ve always enjoyed studying maps; and on ambitious days, increasingly rare I must admit, the maps inspire thoughts of international travel.  These days, however, given risks of terrorism, on-going wars, poverty’s misery and totalitarianism across much of the planet, and COVID fears resulting in travel restrictions without warning that could strand a person in a foreign land indefinitely, being a world traveler no longer seems like such a good idea.  And I have little faith that this situation will improve during my lifetime.  So I’m fairly confident that I will never see as much of the world as Mark Twain did, not even a small percentage.  But I can still re-read books such as The Innocents Abroad or Following the Equator and be content with that.  I think the late Bill Andrey would agree, and I hope he would say that I have made good progress at completing my education.

 

Statue of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Hannibal, Missouri.

 

References

Anfinson, J.O.  2003.  The river we have wrought:  a history of the upper Mississippi.  University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London.

Feldman, J.  2005.  When the Mississippi ran backwards.  Free Press, New York, New York.

 

The Crow Must Die

        “Look!  There goes the Cooper’s hawk!” said Julie.  We had been seeing or hearing at least two all summer, probably a breeding pair with young.  But like most other observations, we again noticed only one hawk.

        “It landed on the bridge,” added Julie, referring to the small foot bridge over Killjordan Creek at Macomb’s Compton Park.  I couldn’t see the bird because of a tree that blocked my view.  But when I finally got a good look, what I saw was a crow on the bridge’s railing.

        “Oh, it was a crow, not a hawk,” I said.

        “No,” Julie adamantly stated, “I saw a Cooper’s hawk.”  So I think I may have offended her, suggesting that she mistook a crow for a hawk, the type of comment that would have caused some birders to draw blood—but not Julie, who understands a birder’s ingrained inability to not immediately correct another birder’s apparent incorrect species I.D.

        “There it is,” I nearly shouted, “and it’s after the crow!”  The two birds engaged in some rather complex aerial dynamics for what seemed like only a few seconds before each headed to separate trees, with the crow uttering low guttural sounds.  Otherwise, there was silence in the park, as its other wildlife residents waited to see what would unfold.  Meanwhile, a woman rode past on her bicycle, totally oblivious to predator and prey assessing each other, working on their next strategies of death and escape.

        Finally, apparently weary of the high drama, the crow took to the air, with the hawk immediately taking up the chase.

        “That hawk is determined to get the crow,” I said.

        “I feel sorry for the crow,” Julie countered, “but really, I don’t know if I feel sorrier for the hawk, which has to eat too.”

        “I think the hawk has the advantage here.  It has a much greater ability for quick and sharp maneuvering in flight than the crow, and its talons are deadly.  It’s really a great example of natural selection’s fine tuning.”  And here, I stopped talking while I was ahead (before the rolling eyes).  But I kept on thinking:  For accipiter hawks to have developed such outstanding flying abilities, so very many birds have had to die over deep time.  But their prey have developed counter tactics, also products of the same evolutionary process.

        “Hey,” I said, abruptly jolted back to the moment, “there are two more crows, and now they’re chasing the hawk!”  The crows worked together as a team, successfully driving the hawk out of the park.  That is, for now.  Before too long, though, I was confident, the hawk would also have its success.

 

A Time for Swallows

Immediately after pushing my canoe from Quiver Lake’s shoreline, I was joined by several tree swallows, each on a unique flight path back and forth over the lake.  Some came so close that I could almost feel the air breaking over their wings.  This late spring morning was cool and clear, with only barely perceptible breezes now and then.  So I drifted on a nearly frictionless glide to the opposite shore, lightly paddling once in a while to orient the canoe, feeling warmth from the sun’s rays on the side of my face, occasionally looking back at the familiar bluffs with our cabin.

 

Quiver Lake, with the Mason County bluffs on the right.

 

        The Illinois River was on the down side of its spring flood, but still high enough for much of the wooded bottomlands between the lake and the river to be under about a foot of water.  More than enough for my canoe.  So I paddled forward into the woods and soon found some black willow trees growing close enough together so that I could wedge the canoe between them and prevent it from drifting off.  I then carefully slid myself to the bottom of the canoe, leaned back, unpacked my books and breakfast sandwich, and settled in to memorize the scene for days when I would be compelled to do other things.

        Tree swallows were also busy in the flooded woods, chattering to each other as they returned to or left their tree-hole nests or while foraging for insects over open water between stands of willows.  The bird community^a here was highly active, engaged in the serious business of raising young.  I was especially pleased to count so many prothonotary warblers.  This species, also a tree-hole nester, does not inhabit upland areas, and so, to see one of these birds requires a trip to the bottomlands during the short songbird breeding season (at other times, they are either elusive or have migrated south); but logistics, weather, and other priorities may not always converge to allow for such a trip at the proper times.  Even as I heard their songs sounding from the trees around me, I realized that it could be a full year before I would see this species again.

        After reading a chapter in Larry McMurtry’s book Roads, I paddled through an extensive stand of willows that earlier in the spring supported a colony of double-crested cormorants.  On calm days in mid-April, I could hear sounds coming from the active colony, including the birds’ guttural communications, from over a third of a mile away at our cabin.  On this day, although the trees still held their stick nests, there were no cormorants nearby.  The young, I thought, had probably fledged not long before, dispersing throughout the river valley, as it seemed unlikely that the adults would have abandoned their nests before that could happen.  For this year anyway, preoccupied with certain of life’s unavoidable obligations, I had not been around enough to know of anything that might have happened at Quiver Lake.  On one day, the area was full of cormorants, and now it wasn’t.  Not much more could I say.

 

Black willow trees with double-crested cormorant nests, 11 June 2022.

 

        Tree swallows were with me all morning, up until I returned to our sandy beach to call it a day.  The next stage in the yearly cycle would have the river falling to its usual summer low-water levels; at the same time, Quiver Lake would drain into the river, and leave behind mud flats and water too shallow for a canoe.  And then the migrating shorebirds, some from the high Arctic, will show up to forage for invertebrates hidden in the mud.  I looked forward to following tree swallows, with my binoculars, flying over the bottoms, until they leave for the south in October.  And I know I will be thinking about those distant willows, across from the mud flats and patches of lake remnants, that once held nesting swallows and singing prothonotary warblers, fairly confident that we’ll all be back again next year.

 

^aBird list from the Quiver Lake area, Mason County, Illinois, 11 June 2022.

    Wood duck

    Double-crested cormorant

    Great blue heron

    Killdeer

    Mourning dove

    Yellow-billed cuckoo

    Red-headed woodpecker

    Red-bellied woodpecker

    Northern flicker

    Great crested flycatcher

    Eastern wood pewee

    Eastern kingbird

    Warbling vireo

    American crow

    Tree swallow

    Northern rough-winged swallow

    Tufted titmouse

    House wren

    Carolina wren

    American robin

    Wood thrush

    Gray catbird

    Prothonotary warbler

    Song sparrow

    Eurasian tree sparrow

    Northern cardinal

    Indigo bunting

    Common grackle

    Red-winged blackbird

    Baltimore oriole