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).

 

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.

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.         

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.

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.

 

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

 

 

Tending the Beast

 

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”—Physicist Robert Oppenheimer quoting Hindu scripture on witnessing detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945.

 

During cool days of late summer, when I’m fairly confident the Illinois River will not rise appreciably for several weeks, I begin to gather driftwood that has accumulated on the Quiver Lake shoreline and stack it into piles.  (Without doing this once in a while, the lakefront would eventually become nearly buried in debris from the flooding river.)  Then in a few weeks, on a breezy, warmish day, after the wood has had a chance to dry out, I’ll light the piles, which quickly grow into infernos that make short work of the dry cottonwood branches.

          Soon, enough heat has built up to light the larger logs.  Once a deep core of intensely hot embers has been established, just about anything thrown onto the flames ignites without delay and is readily consumed.  But manipulating the fire so that everything burns requires more than haphazardly heaving on branches and big logs.  Even so, at this stage, it’s difficult even to get near the blaze to shift the direction of burning or add more wood in just the right place.

 

Woody debris floating toward our lakeshore during an

Illinois River flood.

 

 

Burning piles of driftwood at Quiver Lake, Mason Co., Illinois

 

          The bonfires can get as large as I allow, conflagrations roaring four or five feet high before I stop adding fuel, lest the canopies of nearby trees ignite.  And I’ve planned these fires with wide, clear buffers so the flames cannot spread, no matter how high they reach. These techniques I learned while leading controlled burns on woodlands and prairies, experiences I often reflect upon.

          On warm fall days with a good breeze, I have seen prairie grasses like big bluestem light up like gasoline, flames moving across the landscape with the wind, easily reaching to my height, and advancing to a line of backfire that was earlier set burning against the wind; the two lines of moving flames eventually meet in a dramatic crescendo, but then quickly die, smoldering blackness in their wake.

          One of those prairie fires stands out in my memory for a frightening reason:  the local winds and topography combined in just the right set of conditions to produce a tall, swirling vortex of smoke and blowing embers; I watched helpless in awe as the tornadic column grew in height and intensity; then it began emitting a loud rumbling sound, very much like a freight train or jet engine, and flames started shooting upward within the vortex itself.  Did I see the face of the Devil in those hideously beautiful rising flames?  What have I unleashed?  I asked myself.  Of this monster, I had no control, but it was slowly moving toward the backfire, which had left behind a wide, blackened, burned-off area only minutes before.  When the fire tornado moved over the black area it quickly died, just as if an invisible plug had been pulled.  The beast vanquished.

          Such elemental power in those flames, begun with a single match, controlled with pre-planning, and, once in motion, chaotic as any wildfire—for a short time at least.  But these days that type of activity has been left far behind me, after retiring and then moving into town, leaving behind the small prairie that I planted and tended for two decades.  I miss the excitement of those burns, but not the anxiety and midnight dreams of fires out of control.  These days I prefer a tame fire pit in the back yard, burning twigs that fall from the few trees around our town lot.

 

The author and his wife conducting a controlled burn at 

their former Mason County home.

 

A line of moving flames across the prairie.

 

          At the same time, there is a commonality to all of these fires, no matter the size, something primitive:  that of watching the motion of how, from the smallest leaf to the largest log, it is all consumed; feeling the heat of flames on cold days; feeding more fuel to keep it going, and scrounging up more when necessary; the sweet smell of wood smoke.  For all of our technological advances, it is unlikely that the task of keeping a campfire burning has changed at all since someone once discovered that fire could be contained and made to serve a master.  No other creature has learned to do this; it sets us apart as a species, very far apart, in fact. 

          We can place another piece of wood on a burning stack, travel the solar system, or blow up the world.  Just what, I sometimes wonder, have we unleashed?

 

[Click on this link to see and learn about fire tornados.]

  

The Last Old Oak

 

“Oaks are not only important members of greater ecosystems, but every oak tree is also a wonderful, infinitely complicated ecosystem unto itself.”—from The Life of an Oak:  An Intimate Portrait by Glen Keator

“The falling of a giant tree, whether witnessed or not, is a dramatic event.”—from The Biography of a Tree by James P. Jackson

“I leaned my back against an oak, thinking it was a trusty tree, but first it bent and then it broke…”—from The Water is Wide, a traditional English folk song.

 

Over a decade ago, when we acquired our cabin along the Illinois River bluffs, there were three massive black oak trees living on the property.  But only after a few years, the one near our driveway entrance abruptly died, and I thought it best to have it cut before it fell.  I knew it was an old tree, but I was still surprised when I counted the growth rings on its stump to find that this tree was over two hundred years old.

          A couple of years later, the second of the three ancient oaks died just as unexpectedly as the first.  Still, it looked as if it could be a standing dead tree for many years to come, and when it finally did fall, it would not block the driveway; so I was determined to let it stand, to provide a home for wildlife, to lose its twigs and branches gradually over the years, and eventually be reduced only to the standing main trunk, until that too would fall, perhaps after decades, finally decomposing into the soil.

          But that was not to be.  When a line of dangerous thunderstorms recently passed over the area, the old snag was literally pushed over by the wind, taking a hackberry tree and our neighbor’s split rail fence with it.  We’ll have to restore the fence, so the fallen tree will have to be removed in sections, cut up, split, and stacked as firewood.  It will provide hours of warmth at the cabin’s fireplace before being finally gone.  And its soot will be returned to the woods.

         As I contemplated the task of how to remove such a large tree, I kept thinking of the remaining old black oak in the northeastern corner of our property.  It stands within a remote, thickly wooded area that I probably only set foot upon once or twice.  Over the years, my focus at the cabin has been mostly toward the west, with its river bluffs, Quiver Lake, and the big sky over the wide river valley.  But that would have to change, as I now began to feel anxious about this tree, of losing it before I ever had a chance to enjoy its living nearness and link to a time when the Lewis and Clark expedition was a breaking news item.

 

            The last of the original three old black oaks.

 

         So before I left for home that day, I blazed a new trail through the woods, the “Old Oak Trail” loop, which I would now include on my walks around the property.  Of course, there are other trees that get special attention on these walks:  the pawpaw, which I planted a few years ago; the big hickory with the strangely angled trunk that speaks of some long ago event that left a permanent influence on its growth pattern; the middle-aged bur oak just above flood level; the green ash down on the sandy beach that has yet to be attacked by the emerald ash borer, a certain death that is only a matter of time; and the big cottonwood that serves as a resting and hunting perch for bald eagles.  But the last old black oak now has my full attention, like a venerable war hero, a tattered survivor of the ages, and a reminder that there is so much more to existence than the brief time span of our current era that is so easy to consider the most relevant.

 

A new trail leading to the last old black oak.

 

[Author's Note:  Another Old Oak Done Gone, posted in 2015, is about the first of the three old black oaks at the cabin to die.]

 

For Future Reference

 

“Every mile I make is a memory…”—from the song Ridin’ on the Cotton Belt by Johnny Cash

“Look at that old photograph.  Is it really you?”—from the song This Old Road by Kris Kristofferson  

“It’s okay, it’s alright, I’m alive, and it’s good to be”—from the song Good To Be by Edward David Anderson

 

The Illinois River was at its yearly low level of late summer and early fall.  So upper Quiver Lake, with a direct connection to the river, was reduced to a mosaic of mud flats and shallow water.  I sat in the shade with my binoculars and spotting scope, hoping for broad-winged hawks, osprey, or a large group of migrating shorebirds.  But in lieu of those species, I had good numbers of great egrets, American white pelicans, ring-billed gulls, swallows, and a few Caspian terns and bald eagles.  Quite a few birds to keep my attention, plus the occasional migrating monarch.

          I took in the scene as one might watch a wildlife documentary, waiting for a story to unfold, ready for drama to emerge from behind every shadow.  The bottomland forest beyond the lake remnants taunted me by its inaccessibility, as getting there would involve crossing water too shallow for a canoe and with mud too thick and deep to slog through; all I could do was observe from a distance.  And as I did that I tried to etch the scene into my long-term memory, to be recalled on demand when I am not where I wish to be (waiting rooms, the dentist’s chair, heavy traffic, anywhere it’s crowded, the checkout line behind someone buying lottery tickets using winning tickets to buy more tickets).

 

Quiver Lake, Mason County, Illinois, a late summer scene.

 

          As I strained to fix every color, sound, odor, and feel of the wind into memory, my thoughts drifted, as they often do, to a vivid recollection of my father’s last days in his hospice bed at home.  Did he have special scenes that he could return to at will, up until his final moments?  Was he lost in his own world of thoughts, young again, riding his bicycle from Buffalo, New York, to Niagara Falls?  Did he hear our conversations around him?   He was a quiet, humble man, not prone to deliver monologues of his past triumphs, adventures, or struggles; he passed on few of his favorite memories, and I regret not asking more questions when the opportunities were there for the taking.  I know my time will also come, many years away I can only hope, and I know what I’ll be thinking about:  my wife and our life together; all our trips to places like Lake Itasca, the U.P., Isle Royale, Door County, Charleston, Savannah, Chincoteague Refuge, Lookout Mountain, Taum Sauk Mountain, Niagara Falls, and so many more; and our times at the cabin.

          Other memories, usually lying dormant, are randomly triggered by proximity to place.  For nearly thirty years residing in Mason County, I traveled the back roads many times over, for work and pleasure.  Now, a year and a half after moving fifty miles to the west, with my day-to-day concerns centered around adjusting to new surroundings and the future, I find myself in Mason County mainly when heading to our Quiver Lake cabin, and then only along the river.  But on this most recent cabin visit, I came in from the opposite direction, and traveled over the old familiar countryside again.  With little effort, words and images came flooding back with surprising clarity at nearly every crossroad, creek crossing, road marker, hill, and collapsing barn:  long lost conversations, buried thoughts, and faces frozen in time.  It’s all there, a large portion of my life.  Young again!  If only that were so; the mirror forces the truth, reflecting an aging face that sometimes seems hard to recognize as the same person I’m used to seeing in old photographs.

          Fixating on the wildland dramas of the Illinois River valley is preferable to acknowledging the aging process, which every damn one of us must give in to sooner or later.  Neither can I permanently ignore the outside world, as I need it and all of its resources to live, to afford the luxury of watching birds uninterrupted by responsibilities.

        My time at the cabin is definitely an escape, and in many ways can seem like a kind of throwback or an anchor to a better time:  the pre-pandemic world— before Covid became an actual word; when potholes were repaired, hotel staff were pleasant and unmasked, and only the occasional restaurant worker was inexperienced or incompetent; and when no one ever thought of a store running out of toilet paper.  Or at least that is what my memory tells me.

 

            Quiver Lake, an early fall afternoon.

     

On a Search for the Floodplain Warbler

 

“…right now I’ll just sit here...and watch the river flow.”— from the song Watching the River Flow by Bob Dylan

 

It was a mid-summer day in July as I stood before Killjordan Creek in our nearby well-manicured city park, once again lamenting the tradeoffs of moving into town from the country.  Birding is one of those tradeoffs, but I guess I always knew that birding in Macomb would be less of an experience than it was near the Illinois River valley.  Thoughts of the river conjured up images in my mind of wood ducks, pileated woodpeckers, and especially the prothonotary warbler, which I think of as the “floodplain warbler.”

        But I would never expect to see a prothonotary warbler in my town, even along the creek, because this species is so closely tied to wild floodplain forests that it is rarely seen anywhere else during the breeding season.  So I began making plans to visit remote forests along the Illinois River, places that would pull me as far from a tame town life as I could get.  (Too much domestication cannot be good for the soul.)  And I needed to do this soon, because the season was quickly moving along:  swallows were already loosely staging for their fall flights back to wintering territories, mid-summer cicadas had begun calling, and corn crops were in the tasseling stage; soon the warblers would cease their territorial behavior, and would be harder than ever to find.

        Within a few days, the weather and river levels converged to present an excellent set of conditions:  clear, mild weather with light breezes combined with a long-sustained flood on the Illinois River.  The river was four feet above flood stage.  And with that kind of depth, I could canoe through any of the floodplain forests at Quiver Lake—an Illinois River backwater—and Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.  The day would be mine; in the flooded forest, there would be no hikers, no ATVs, no fancy glitter-painted power boats, and no personal watercraft.  I would stay the night before at our lake cabin for an early start the following morning.

 

                        *                 *                 *

Soon after sunrise, I carried my canoe and gear to the water’s edge, which was high up onto Quiver Lake’s flooded shoreline.  I quickly floated out into the open water and immediately felt the warmth of the early morning sun on my back; but it was slow to dissipate the night’s humidity, which hung on as a fading mist over the nearby wildlife refuge and as a complex aroma of vegetation, fish, damp wood, mud, and a certain unique quality of the river water that I’ve never been able to identify.

 

               Quiver Lake and its flooded shoreline.

 

          With the river spreading onto its floodplain and into connected backwaters, there was only a slight downstream movement of water.  So, smoothly passing over the bottoms, with only slight paddle strokes, I meandered around small stands of black willows, a couple of which had an eastern kingbird on the highest branches; and I shared the open water with numerous tree swallows that flew quite close to the canoe.  Then a group of great egrets caught my attention, perched in the topmost branches of a tall tree.  Just beyond the egrets was a towboat heading upriver, its loud, rumbling diesel engines dominating all sounds.  Continuing toward the sound of the towboat, I floated across a low ridge covered with vegetation that formed a narrow band parallel to the river; the water was only a foot and a half deep here, and I could see the river about fifty feet ahead.

 

Floating over a natural river levee.  The Illinois River is beyond the trees.

 

          As I reached the edge of the trees, the water quickly became deeper, and I was suddenly floating in the Illinois River itself, finding myself being pulled downstream by the gentle, but quite noticeable, current.  More swallows (barn, bank, northern rough-winged, and tree) flew on all sides as I crossed the river in a beeline to the opposite shore while also moving sideways downstream.  Then I saw some rather large, wide swells (about one foot in height) approaching, undoubtedly caused by the towboat that was out of sight around the river bend.  They were a not-so-gentle reminder to pay attention and leave the daydreaming and birding for later.

          Eventually, I settled the canoe against a shoreline thicket of willow and swamp privet, facing the river, with the current keeping it locked in place.  Only then was I able to truly relax; and so, with my breakfast unpacked, I sat back to absorb the river and river life around me, to memorize the scene in such a way as to be able to retrieve it at critical moments when it feels as if the constraints of town life are closing in.  And just then a prothonotary warbler loudly sang its simple song, truly completing the scene very much as I earlier envisioned, and fully cementing it to memory.  Soon a nearby American redstart’s song rang out against the calls of a quite agitated red-headed woodpecker, with a yellow-billed cuckoo joining in.  And I sat there thinking about my circumstances:  sitting on the bottom of a canoe over several feet of water, being held in place by a flowing river well over flood stage, shade trees towering overhead, schools of young-of-the-year fish about a half inch long just below the water’s surface, no sounds except for bird songs and calls echoing throughout the trees, Lake Michigan upstream, the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico downstream.  Of the 12.8 million people living in Illinois, how many have had such an experience or for that matter were having a similar experience at that exact moment?  My guess is not that many.

 

                  The Illinois River from a canoe.

 

          That last idea, of course, represented the world beyond the river intruding.  Ah, the rest of the world…I trusted that it had survived just fine in my absence.  Although I was where I wanted to be, watching the river flow, the noon hour was approaching; and I could actually see and feel the mid-day summer heat building.  It was time to go.  And so, I eased the canoe out of the current, floated back over the natural levee, through the forest, and into the open backwaters beyond—listening one last time, in vain as it turned out, for another prothonotary warbler.  Circumstances would surely converge again, before too long I hoped, for a return.

 

Towboat pushing barges on the Illinois River.  (Illustration by the late Patti Malmborg Reilly).  This illustration originally appeared in the book Side Channels:  A Collection of Nature Writing and Memoir, available on this blog as a free ebook download (click here).

 

Bird List for the Morning (July 7, 2021):  Prothonotary warbler, American redstart, warbling vireo, blue-gray gnatcatcher, red-headed woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, northern flicker, tree swallow, barn swallow, bank swallow, northern rough-winged swallow, great egret, great blue heron, double-crested cormorant, killdeer, spotted sandpiper, house wren, Baltimore oriole, eastern wood-pewee, great crested flycatcher, eastern kingbird, American goldfinch, Carolina wren, black-capped chickadee, northern cardinal, American robin, yellow-billed cuckoo, mourning dove, red-winged blackbird, common grackle, indigo bunting, ring-billed gull, gray catbird, white-breasted nuthatch, wood duck.

Always an Eagle

 

“My mind ain’t nothing but a total blank…”— Merle Haggard

 

Arriving at the Quiver Lake cabin on an early May afternoon, the first sounds I heard were the clear song notes of a Baltimore oriole.  That was a good start, but having missed most of the bird migration this spring, I was nearly desperate to see as many species as possible during this all too brief cabin visit.

        My preference would have been to be at the cabin during sunrise just after a strong storm system had passed in the night, bringing the migrating birds down into the trees; but time and circumstances offered only a windy afternoon.  Even so, I enthusiastically exited my vehicle, grabbed my binoculars, and began to stalk slowly around our wooded 1.75-acre property.

        There certainly were more birds around than a month before, but the wind made it difficult to hear faint call notes or songs of whatever migrants, especially warblers, might be high in the tree canopies.  And with most trees leafed out, finding tiny songbirds by sight in the chaotically blowing tree branches became an exercise in futility.  Glancing outward over the Illinois River valley, I saw that water levels had risen quite a bit since my last visit, flooding out mud flats along Quiver Lake that may have attracted herons, egrets, or migrating shorebirds.  My afternoon dedicated to birding was by every turn becoming a bust.

        So I gave up on the upland woods and headed to the lakeshore.  Midway down the steep river valley bluff, I recalled that a bald eagle nest was visible, maybe a half mile away, just barely protruding above the floodplain forest canopy between Quiver Lake and the Illinois River:  higher up the bluff, nearby tree branches blocked the view; only a few feet further down the bluff, the nest was hidden by surrounding forests.  Only at one unique elevation was the nest in clear view.

        With my spotting scope set on full power, I clearly saw an adult eagle on its nest, white head and yellow beak shining in the sunlight; and it was attending to at least one nestling.  I had been loosely monitoring this nest for the last four years, and it looked as if at least one eagle had fledged each year.  I also knew there were three other bald eagle nests along the river within a few miles.  So the Quiver Lake nest is not just an isolated case; there is a small local population here between Havana and the National Wildlife Refuges (Chautauqua and Emiquon).  During winter, there are even more eagles around, most having migrated from the north; seeing twenty or more within a few hours of birding along the river valley is not unusual.  Whatever else may seem tenuous or unpredictable these days, a bald eagle sighting in this area is a near certainty at any time of the year.  And that fact alone is enough to bolster my mood; because by the early 1970s, eagle populations had declined so much nationwide that there were no eagles nesting in Illinois.

 

Bald eagle nest at Sangamon Bay along the Illinois River

(near Browning), 1996.  Many trees died in this area due to

extended  flooding in 1993.  See The Eagle Quest link below.

 

Bald eagle nest at Meredosia National Wildlife Refuge along

the Illinois River, 1999.  Many trees died in this area due to

extended  flooding in 1993.

 
 

        In the late 1980s, I remember feeling extremely excited seeing a bald eagle, but also troubled because I was not sure how long they would be able to survive against increasing loss or disturbance of natural areas and the continued, widespread use of a variety of toxic chemicals that can enter food chains ending with the eagle.  In my mind, the bald eagle had become a sad symbol of our nation’s carelessness toward the environment. But now, almost fifty years after the pesticide DDT had been banned in the United States (DDT had been linked to the decline of several bird species, including the bald eagle) and following years of targeted efforts by wildlife agencies to increase bald eagle populations, the species has been deemed officially “recovered.”

                                            *  *  *

        I spent more time than usual watching the nesting eagles before continuing down the bluff side to the lakeshore.  Good things are happening these days, I kept reminding myself, even as my mind was filled with thoughts of the COVID pandemic and the recent foreign cyberattacks on our nation’s petroleum pipelines that instantaneously resulted in panic buying and gasoline shortages on the East Coast.  One lesson of these modern times, it seems, is not to take anything for granted.  I say “anything” because who would have ever expected that at the first mention of a possible pandemic in early 2020, the first thought in the minds of many across the country would be to run to the local supermarket and buy up all of the toilet paper in sight?  Not the number two thought, but number one!

        When I eventually emerged from the dense tree cover bordering Quiver Lake, my view expanded to the open skies.  I panned for soaring raptors, searching especially for broad-winged hawks or ospreys, another species severely impacted by DDT and still recovering. Then I saw a soaring adult bald eagle, which very likely was the mate from the Quiver Lake nest.  And still panning, I immediately saw an immature bald eagle, probably two or three years old, with little doubt, part of the local population.  Feeling the same excitement as my first bald eagle sighting four decades ago in the wilds of northeastern Minnesota, I knew that I would never take an eagle sighting for granted. 

        As I began climbing back up the bluff to the cabin, I heard a singing black-throated green warbler.  Following the repeating song, I found the bird in a small red cedar tree, alternating between singing and energetically foraging for insects.  I simply stood there watching this bird, who was unconcerned about my presence a mere fifteen feet away, minute after minute; the best sighting ever.  I could have easily begun thinking about declining warbler populations and multiple threats these Neotropical migrants face, such as loss of overwintering forests in Central America or crashing into glass-walled buildings, but I didn’t; I just watched, mesmerized, I guess, my mind a total blank.

 

References

Campbell, M.F., editor.  2002.  Finding bald eagles in Illinois.  Illinois Audubon Society, Danville, Illinois.

del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., and Christie, D.A., eds.  2010.  Handbook of the birds of the world, vol. 15.  Weavers to New World warblers.  Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

 

Links to Bald Eagle-related Posts on this Blog:

 

Bald Eagle Swims with Fish in Talons

Bald Eagle Takes Down a Canada Goose in Flight

The Eagle Quest 

Timeless Scenes Along the Illinois River

Bald Eagles on a Morning Commute

 

Following the Gold

 

I don't care for walkin' down town
Crazy auto car gonna mow me down
Look at all the people like cows in a herd
Well I like...
Birds— From the song I Like Birds by The Eels (Mark O. Everett) as featured in the movie The Big Year

 

Clouds and cold canceled a late March day trip to our Quiver Lake cabin.  So I stayed inside, shifting among reading, playing the guitar, or looking out the window.  Despite the weather, maple trees were flowering and lawns were greening up.  So why was I thinking longingly of winter days?  Ducks.  It was nearly one month ago that I last saw Quiver Lake full of ducks.

          Driving up the bluff road on a weak February thaw, lower Quiver Lake was still mostly frozen.  Hundreds of snow geese in formation filled the skies, but without open water, I expected little activity further up the lake near the cabin.  Even so, it would be nice to be on the edge of the Illinois River valley's wildness for a while, away from town life in Macomb.

 

A mid-winter scene at the Quiver Lake cabin

 

          When I slowly pulled down the gravel drive to the cabin, I saw that upper Quiver Lake was all open water, and it was loaded with ducks!  Without delay, then, I climbed down the bluff to the beach, set up my spotting scope, and proceeded to check out each of the hundreds of waterfowl.  Canvasback, lesser Scaup, and ring-necked ducks were the most numerous of the seventeen species in view^a.  After a slow, careful scan of all the birds, I settled back for some behavior watching.  Ritualized courtship activities can be especially entertaining, where poses and body movements are quick; for example, throwing the head back, lowering the head and swimming a short distance, bobbing the head up and down.  Sometimes several males, all acting like fools, surround a lone female, who usually seems to find a gap in the crowd to skitter away, leaving the males behind dazed and confused.  While all of this is very impressive, each year I become overwhelmed all over again by the deep colors and intricate patterns on the plumage of the male birds.  My appreciation for the pure artistry of these birds is only equaled by admiration for their abilities to navigate accurately over hundreds or thousands of miles between overwintering and breeding grounds, surviving daily threats and challenges; and for each species as a whole, surviving numerous back and forth climate changes over thousands of years and massive landscape alterations over the last two hundred.

          As I was lost in the joy and awe of watching these birds, a whistling sound of constant cadence sounded from above, as a small group of common goldeneyes came in for a gentle landing near several other males.  These birds were on their way to the boreal forests of the northern Midwest and Canada to build nests in holes in trees close to wetlands, lakes, or rivers.  I think of the goldeneye as a winter duck, but seeing one always causes me to recall the north woods of Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

          In my mind’s eye, I see a summer trail along the edge of Tobin Harbor, a large inlet providing access to the island’s wilderness interior, protected from Superior’s sometimes violent weather:  I walk slowly and hope to blend into the shadows of the spruce-fir forest, on the lookout for moose, when I notice a female goldeneye attempting to keep a low profile along the shoreline rocks and overhanging vegetation; there are no young about, and I think she may have lost her entire brood to predation….

          That was a golden day, a long time ago, I reflected, nearly thirty-five years; and then I noticed a bald eagle standing on a frozen portion of Quiver Lake, using its hooked beak to tear apart a dead fish.  In hindsight, the North Country has taken on an almost mythical status, so rarely have I been able to return; but the Illinois River valley also has its golden moments.  All too soon, though, it was time to leave; home was about an hour away, with sundown and dinner with my wife Julie soon to follow.

 

From a canoe on Tobin Harbor at Isle Royale National Park, 1986
 

          When I returned to the cabin a week later, all the ice was gone, and there were no ducks in sight.  With wetlands opening up, especially further north, the migrating waterfowl were less likely to be concentrated, except at high quality sites such as the Emiquon Refuge and Nature Preserve, just across the river from Quiver Lake.  I saw pine siskins and purple finches foraging on a silver maple, which still hinted of the north woods.  And yet I could not help but feel that a portion of the migration’s succession of species might have already passed my area, undoubtedly while I had been preoccupied with indoor activities at home.

                                     *        *        *

            Over the last few days at home, I’ve been seeing an eastern towhee skulking around our bare burning bush and lilacs.  And any day now I expect to hear the first eastern phoebe of the year.  The spring migration is in full swing.  But it’s not just the birds I look forward to.  Because unlike when I was young and just starting to notice birds, I now can reflect upon little scenes or stories associated with each species:  where I first saw a species; birding companions sharing my enthusiasm; the uncertainties of a younger life now resolved.  I’ve noticed this more and more as the years have gone by.

^aCanvasback, lesser scaup, ring-necked duck, redhead duck, common merganser, common goldeneye, bufflehead, ruddy duck, northern pintail, mallard, wood duck, gadwall, American widgeon, swan (tundra or trumpeter), Canada goose, greater white-fronted goose, snow goose.

 

Falling Ice

The other night, a red fox passed through our backyard.  It barked a few times, sounding a bit like a cat trying to sound like a dog. The next morning, I saw unmistakable fox tracks in the snow among numerous rabbit tracks.  And for the next two days, I often thought of the fox and of another, earlier time when my wife Julie and I saw a fox at our Quiver Lake cabin along the Illinois River valley. 

        We were relaxing on the cabin’s screened front porch on a late summer afternoon, quietly looking out over the bluff side and lake, getting ready to head back to our home in Macomb.  Reluctant to leave, our attention was unfocused, trying to absorb the scene one last time before packing up the car.  So when a fox ran across our view, quickly out of the brush and then back into it, we both looked at each other as if to ask, Is that really what we just saw?  The sighting made the entire day stand out against an already unusual year (2020):  warm memories to reflect upon during cold winter days.  The recollection made me want to visit the cabin again, even though it was shut down for the winter.

        So on the first good day following the weekend’s winter storms, I quickly dispensed with the few errands that demanded attention and headed for the Illinois River valley, nearly an hour away.  The town roads and rural highways were clear, but the surrounding countryside was blanketed in a continuous layer of snow and ice, and the exceptionally bright morning sun glared downward, reflecting off a glistening plain of white in every direction as far as I could see across the barren farm fields.  As I approached the Illinois River bluffs, the thickness and pervasiveness of the ice cover increased.  Tree branches drooped from the weight; fallen limbs lined the roads; and with temperatures just above freezing, ice and melt water literally rained from roadside trees, every now and again crashing down in great cascades upon the vehicle’s windshield as if I were traveling through a melting glacier.

        At the cabin, raccoon and squirrel tracks ran up and down our cement walkway leading to the sandy beach far below.  But fox tracks, I did not see.  So I focused my attentions on the blue sky, the half-frozen Quiver Lake, and distant floodplain forests, all covered in ice, across the lake and at Chautuaqua National Wildlife Refuge.  A group of Wilson’s snipe, which had been foraging in the seeps along the water’s edge, took flight as I emerged from beneath tall cottonwoods; across the lake, a bald eagle perched near the top of a tree; Canada geese and greater white-fronted geese lounged on the ice; and within minutes, a group of common mergansers executed flawless soft landings in the water near the geese.  I could have stayed there all day, reveling in this classic winter scene, but cold breezes off the lake were already beginning to penetrate my thin clothing.

 

Quiver Lake with trees glazed in ice, January 5, 2021

 

        With an extra jacket and hood, I ate a sandwich on the cabin’s front porch, much quicker than I normally would have.  My bare hands became colder by the minute, but I enjoyed listening to the honking geese, searching for an elusive fox, and watching ice fall from trees.  And with every crystal changing from solid to liquid, with every drip, it was one more step toward spring, still many weeks and winter storms away.

 

Birding to a Time and Place

 

“I remember everything, things I can’t forget…” – from the song I Remember Everything by John Prine

 

In our small Macomb backyard, under warm Indian Summer breezes and falling leaves, I looked beyond the overhead electrical wires into the unblemished blue sky, thinking about great egrets.  (Egrets are large [39 inches from bill tip to tail tip] long-legged, pure white birds usually seen only in wetlands or near lake shores or river banks.)  I was thinking about them because they seemed so remote from my urban surroundings; even a flyover would be unlikely; they also reminded me of some of my favorite wild places, from which, at that moment, I was far removed.  Comforting images among the sound of leaf blowers and mulching mowers.

 

Great egret at Shem Creek Park, South Carolina, 2019

 

          I saw my first great egret in 1984 at a small wetland near Chicago.  I was back at home in Berwyn, a Chicago suburb, after living two years in southern Illinois.  Never wanting to move back, I preferred the small university town of Carbondale near the forested Shawnee Hills; but this decision was forced by personal finances, of which there was not much, with only slight improvements on the horizon (the classic boomerang trajectory).  Living in the attic again, with its low, sloping ceiling and one small window, I missed the openness and abundant public lands of southern Illinois.  And so I was often drawn to the Cook County Forest Preserves, most of which were kept in a natural state with only minimal management focused on maintaining specific habitats such as prairie, open oak woodlands, or wetlands.  There were many official and unofficial trails, and I soon had a favored route. 

        Mostly I followed an unmarked game trail heavily used by the preserve’s abundant white-tailed deer population, and rarely did I encounter people, as most folks gathered near the picnic shelters or stayed on the marked trail system.  So I was rather startled early one morning, when I thought no one else was around, to hear a man, only a few feet away, say, “Did you see the crane?  I see him here all the time.”  “No,” I curtly replied.  I never saw the man until he spoke up, so I was immediately on my guard, much as I would be if similarly approached in a dark Chicago alley.  The “crane” stood in the shallows of a marsh, just on the edge of open water.  I took a quick look at the bird and then quickly continued on my way, thinking that in the future I would need to pay more attention to surroundings, even on a remote trail; this was Cook County, after all.

        Later on, I looked up the “crane” in a field guide and saw that it was, in fact, not a crane, but a great egret.  At the time, I was only beginning to learn how to identify birds, and I was quite excited at seeing what seemed like a rare species.  That excitement stayed with me throughout the summer as I encountered many other bird species for the first time, and I had a feeling that I was on the cusp of a major life change; I see now that there was my life before becoming a birder and another more fulfilling, questioning, and aware life thereafter.

        Yet simply keeping track of the birds that I saw (the very basic definition of a birder) would not have sustained my interest for very long.  The aesthetic aspect of birds is, of course, highly appealing; and many times, especially in recent years, I will watch birds simply because they are beautiful and they make me feel good.  But what has really kept my interest has been trying to understand each species’ relationship to its habitat, and this necessarily requires watching and interpreting behavior, sometimes in detail for long periods.      

        Our cabin along the Illinois River bluffs provides the perfect setting for serious birding; there is an expansive view of the three-mile-wide river valley and access to Quiver Lake, a large backwater connected to the river and adjacent to Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.  From my perspective, once living in a big city and now in a small town, the river valley is a wilderness, and my access is through the cabin.  It’s where I can sit for hours on end to see the day unfold, to consider meanings. 

        From April to October, great egrets are fairly common at Quiver Lake, depending upon what the river is doing.  During floods, there is often little shallow water for them to slowly stalk prey (small fish), and the egrets must fly elsewhere in search of appropriate wetland habitats.  Sometimes even the forests are flooded.  But during other times, especially in August and September when the river is usually at its lowest levels, much of upper Quiver Lake, near the cabin and Chautauqua Refuge, is a series of mudflats with several shallow streams of water fed by Quiver Creek near the refuge boundary.  Fish are then easy to spot and catch in the shallow waters, and this attracts great egrets and many other large fish-eating birds such as great blue herons, snowy egrets, ring-billed gulls, Caspian terns, and American white pelicans in deeper water.  And, of course, the mud flats usually attract shorebirds from a variety of species.

 

Quiver Lake at low water, showing mud flats and seeps

 

        When conditions are just right and the river valley is teaming with birds, I’ll bring a folding chair down to the lakeside, which is lined with seeps of pure groundwater gently flowing into countless tiny channels from the sandy bluff side bottom into the muddy lake bed.  Through a spotting telescope, I’ll pick out a single bird to watch until my attention inevitably begins to dissipate or my eyes begin to strain.  There is always a reward, from the dramatic scene of an osprey diving into the water, emerging with a fish in its talons, to a small nugget of information on how an egret swallows a fish larger than its own head.  In my field notes on September 22, 2020, I wrote the following:  The egret struggled to position the fish (a gizzard shad about 6 to 8 inches long) correctly so that it could swallow, and even dropped it a few times in the water, but quickly retrieving it each time.  Eventually through sheer persistence, the egret flipped its head and neck in just the right way, and the fish moved right into its beak and down its throat.  Here the neck muscles took over, and I could see the bulge in the egret’s neck, caused by the fish, slowly move downward.  In doing this, it took frequent sips of water to help move the fish downward.  I fully expected the egret to give up, as the shad simply seemed too big to swallow; and then, after the fish had actually entered its throat, I expected the bird to choke.  But it never showed any sign of distress or impatience, obviously having successfully performed such an act many times before.

 

                                       *        *        *

        Soon after that warm November day in my urban backyard, when I was connecting to wild areas through thoughts of the great egret, I returned to the cabin, knowing that within a few days I would have to close it down for the winter.  But so far the warm weather had continued, and it truly felt like summer again; I was beginning to forget about the coming cold weather, even though fall colors reminded me otherwise.  The river had stayed low; mud flats were still there; and quite a few shorebirds were still around, but I could find no great egrets.  They had gone south for the year, and I probably would not see another one until April of the following year, which seemed so far away.  How would the world change between now and then?  I hoped that changes would be for the better, but for this year, at least, most trends were going in the other direction. 

        Later in the day, just after sundown, when the dark forest trees on the other side of Quiver Lake stood in contrast against the yellow-and-orange glare of the western sky, two great horned owls called.  One of the owls then flew to a nearby tree, and was soon followed by the other owl from across the lake.  I took this to be a positive sign for the future, and thought about my first great horned owl over thirty-five years ago, not far from that first great egret.  My mind became filled with images, as if I had forgotten not one detail over the years.  Powerful memories they were.  And I was transported in time and place.

 

Quiver Lake just after sundown, November 6, 2020
     

 

From a Gathering of Blackbirds

Even though the air temperature was 93 degrees F, where I sat, under the shade of a large cottonwood tree, it was pleasant, especially when the wind gusted off Quiver Lake.  There I could sit for hours watching the white caps roll, with swallows foraging for insects just above the water and turkey vultures soaring beneath billowy clouds.  But it was late in the day, and I needed to return home, an hour away in Macomb, for dinner with my wife, Julie.

 

Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, at the cabin

 

          Just when I was about to slowly stand up, several red-winged blackbirds and common grackles flew across my view, then landed in a silver maple tree just above the water’s edge.  More calling blackbirds then arrived from further up the shoreline toward Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge to join with those perching in the maple tree, but some of the original birds flew onward to other trees down the lakeshore.  This loosely knit flock was the first gathering of blackbirds that I had seen this summer.  The flocks often include brown-headed cowbirds, rusty blackbirds, and European starlings (this species, though, is not in the blackbird family), and they usually begin coalescing every year sometime in the middle of July just after the breeding season is completed.  It is a benchmark in the year, an event that I use to mark the seasonal progression, a moment when I begin to think of the fall and coming winter—though summer’s heat and humidity may be extreme—and what surprises the following year may bring, both good and bad.

          But it’s obviously easier to look backward than attempt to predict what may come to pass.  For example, one year ago, I could not have anticipated how abruptly we would move from our primary residence in the rural countryside of Mason County to the small western Illinois town of Macomb.  Such thoughts were, of course, in our minds as a distinct possibility for several years; but the fact of the move, and that it happened so quickly after the process had begun in October, shocked and transformed our placid lives in a way that has yet to return to an equilibrium.  When we return to Mason County to manage our remaining affairs or to visit the cabin at Quiver Lake, we still cannot help but feel, even after six months, that we are back home.

          Last July we had not yet even talked about taking a trip of a lifetime in the coming November to visit several southeastern states, waters with wild manatees and alligators, and to spend a late afternoon drinking wine and watching hang gliders above northwestern Georgia’s Lookout Mountain.  The thought had never entered my mind at any time in the past, let alone last July, that in recent weeks a black bear from Wisconsin would swim across the Mississippi River twice, into and out of Iowa, before entering western Illinois, all the while traveling quickly in a purposeful southern direction, passing around ten miles west of our new home in town, then swim across the river again to Missouri north of St. Louis, and all the while be tracked by the media and thousands of people concerned about the bear’s welfare (Bruno the bear he would be dubbed); in October, I would discover through an internet search that a good childhood friend, Sigi Bigelis, had been dead from cancer for five years, sadly answering a nagging question in my mind of why we had lost touch; I’m sure that few last year would have predicted the world would soon be in an upheaval from the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) and plunged into a self-inflicted, deep economic recession from governmental mandates attempting to control the virus’s spread, perhaps permanently changing the way people interact in public, from wearing face masks to social distancing to relegating handshaking as a thing of the past; and I never expected to be witness to widespread civil unrest, racial tensions, and domestic violence at scales and intensities not recalled in my memory since the late 1960s. 

        The prosperity of last summer seems more than a lifetime ago.  But from those good times, well before everything had collapsed amid the virus and social anarchy, NASA—ever optimistic about the future—announced concrete plans to not only return to the Moon by 2024, but to use the new Moon missions to establish a gateway toward sending astronauts to Mars, hopefully still within my lifetime (effects from the COVID-19 pandemic apparently have not significantly altered those plans).

          And so, the next year will unfold as it will, no matter what I do, say, or think, just as the case has always been.  But with so many negative arrows hitting their targets, it’s a struggle to remain upright and positive, even with NASA in my corner, especially with multiple daily reminders of life-threatening dangers ready to strike by merely breathing the air at a supermarket checkout line, while at the same moment attempting and often failing to stay at least six feet away from others, reminding myself not to think of them as walking contagions, and keeping my hands away from my face. 

        Under my cottonwood tree at Quiver Lake with its floodplain forest wilderness along the Illinois River, I feel safe from threats, finding solace in nature as I always have.  Surrounded by such peace, I am always reluctant to leave; but leave I must, in order to live, just as I must confront the world outside and all that it may hurl in my direction.

 

The Page Turning

Looking back along the road I've traveled, the miles can tell a million tales. – from Starlight on the Rails by Utah Phillips

August 2019

Across Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, near the top of a large dead tree, is an active bald eagle nest that I’ve kept track of since late February. I’ve enjoyed watching the nestling grow, but I worry on windy days when the tree seems to sway a bit much. It wasn’t so long ago that bald eagle nests were highly scarce in Illinois. So the recovery of this species to a healthy population is cause for optimism, quite appropriate for the spring season…especially spring 2019.
        For last summer I entered that phase of life known as “retirement.” The word evokes many emotions and expectations, undoubtedly different for every individual. For me, it is a time for rest and reflection, for pursuing new adventures with my wife, and for tried and true personal interests unhindered by work-a-day demands (no timekeeping).
        This is the first spring that I’ve had the time and wherewithal to observe seasonal changes in minute detail, from the shortest days of winter, buried in cold and ice. As the calendar advanced, I looked for those changes along the home trails, but sometimes beyond. The spring bird migration, for instance, is heralded in my mind with the first red-winged blackbird song, this year on February 19th. The first turkey vulture of the year is another sign (February 28th). But I’ve followed such changes in bird communities for many years. And even on my busiest of working days, I always took the time to glance around and listen for birds, though it might have only been moments while walking from the office to my parked vehicle.
        Changes in plant growth from day to day are much more subtle. In central Illinois, one might not think to search for the first spring flowering in February; but with a mild winter, that is when I’ll start closely looking at hazelnut shrubs. This year, I was able to watch their buds swell just slightly more each day, but with plenty of cold weather setbacks. Then as February passed, I became anxious; until on March 14th, several tiny, fully formed petals finally emerged. A similar story I could tell for all of the other plants along the home trails. Of course, I’ve watched all of these developments for many years, but never before with enough time.

                                            * * *
Always remember: The longer you live, the sooner you'll bloody-well die. – from Isn’t it Grand Boys - Traditional Irish Folk Song

It has been said that life in general occurs in four phases, and at age 61, I’ve found that concept to resonate. The following is simply my interpretation. The first phase, of course, begins at infancy and continues to young adulthood, when everything is new, learning is effortless and swift, and time passes the slowest, with the future open ended. The transition to the second life phase is rather abrupt, at the arbitrary age of eighteen. Thereafter we are considered adults; from this point onward, life inevitably becomes more complicated. Time still plods along, and sometimes progress is slow. But it’s a time for fearlessness, adventure and taking risks, blending new experiences with old and new knowledge; taking wrongs paths, making mistakes; backing up and correcting course while hopefully making progress.
        As the second phase begins to show wear and adolescent ideas of fun begin to be not so amusing, one gradually enters the third and perhaps longest phase of life, middle and late-middle adulthood: a time of serious dedication, accomplishment, increasing responsibility, and means. Time begins to move noticeably faster, and this shocking reality is frequently a topic of conversation among contemporaries; ten years no longer seems to be such a long time. One may begin to look backward, hopefully with satisfaction, as much as forward, still with much anticipation.
        So when does the fourth phase begin? In my view, the fourth phase begins as abruptly as adulthood: with retirement from the working, wage-earning world. But that point does not necessarily equate with being elderly, especially for those retiring well before the usual age of sixty-five. An elderly individual, however, certainly is within the final life phase, working or not. Knowing it is the final phase, some attempt to delay entry, but time eventually wins out, and drags everyone through. The fourth life phase is for taking stock; one tends to look backward more often simply because there are more years behind than in front. Time gallops along, and that is usually a source of sadness. One likely has acquired a certain degree of wisdom and skills, such as playing a musical instrument, that can sweeten these years, even though younger generations will probably be dismissive—just as it has always been. Living in the moment provides security; the future is contemplated with an optimism that comes with being in control, but it is also viewed with increasing trepidation.
        It is in this frame of mind that I opened our three-season Quiver Lake cabin in early April. But where I once unlocked the cabin with open-armed enthusiasm as soon as winter weather was barely over, I have begun to approach the event with a certain degree of apprehension. Why? There was the year when turning on the water pump blew out the connectors on the old toilet; the year water pressure in the old toilet pulled the tank’s worn rubber stopper into its drain, and allowed water to run continuously (we purchased a new toilet); the year I delayed shutting down the cabin for the winter, so the pipes froze and all had to be replaced; the year the water pump malfunctioned and had to be replaced; the year we finally discovered the leaking roof, but not before dripping water ruined a piece of artwork (we re-roofed the cabin); the year the kitchen faucet leaked from a crack created by a tiny residue of water not drained in the fall; the year the new roof began leaking (“That’s not possible!”); the year of the carpenter ant invasion; and the year the new siding let rain in through the wall at every nail, as if the siding were not even there. What will it be this year, I thought, just before I flipped the power switch to the water pump? At first, air in the pipes caused an uneven flow of water, which gave me a scare. So I shut everything down, and then re-started the system. After a little coughing, it worked! But then I saw the leaking kitchen sink sprayer. Again, a small residue of water left behind over the winter had frozen and cracked the housing. But that was easily replaced without calling a plumber. And with good health so far, I let my guard down and was ready to enjoy a new season at the cabin.
        As my wife and I plan ahead for the coming years, there are days when anything seems possible: European trips, Alaska, northern Canada, New England, driving a rented RV across the country, Florida manatees, a new home in a culturally diverse university town, gardening, beekeeping, a published novel.
        Are we running out of time? Of course, but the passage of time is not constant, as life and Einstein have shown; time can be slowed. By watching plants grow, tracking cloud formations across the sky as they imperceptibly change shape, listening to wind in the trees, watching hawks soar on rising air thermals, and taking afternoon naps, time can be seized and then slowed down. At the Quiver Lake cabin, I will give this idea further thought, perhaps while watching a pair of bald eagles raise the next generation. In the end, time will remain the master, but not without at least some opposition.

 

                                              * * *
Oh, I don’t know how I got this old, how the winter got so cold, now the morning’s turning gold, and I should stop my dreaming. – from Mind to Think, by John Gorka

Although the middle of July might seem early to expect the start of the fall bird migration, indicators abound, even in the unyielding summer heat and humidity. The pattern repeats yearly; it is something to be counted upon. So when I looked down the country road west of home, I was gladdened to see a small group of bank swallows perching on the telephone wires. They had left their breeding colonies along some stream or hillside and were beginning to stage for their upcoming flights to South American overwintering territories. At the same time, it was a slightly bittersweet moment, because the sight of those swallows also meant the first year of my retirement was over.
        One year before, I stood at the same location, viewing the same scene with swallows on the wires, pondering how the rest of my life might unfold, still somewhat in shock at having arrived at that point. In this phase of life, the discovery of one more year passing provides little comfort. But my attention was quickly diverted from a path toward darker thoughts by a singing blue grosbeak and calling dickcissels; from the timber I heard a yellow-billed cuckoo, two excited red-headed woodpeckers, and an eastern towhee. It was still the middle of summer after all; I had just walked through the backyard prairie, where blooming partridge pea, gray-headed coneflower, and Monarda dominated the view. And this scene anticipated the next stage in the seasonal progression: tall prairie grasses with showy panicles, blue asters, and yellow goldenrods brightly shining in the late summer sunlight. But I would not think about those coming days too much, as doing so tends to rush the season, and rushing through the year is what I least wish to do, just as I prefer to take my time reading a good book.
        Life, in fact, has been compared to a book—each day, month, year, or season like turning a page—with a definite beginning, middle, and final end. Life also has been compared to a river like the Mississippi, with narrow, energetic, swift-moving headwaters; a long, drawn-out middle section that forms the majority of the river’s length; and the aged, languorous, massive final segment before its end, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Either over worn analogy has merit. But I think life is more like a cloud: it forms out of nowhere, grows, changes unpredictably until it no longer resembles what it once was, and finally dissipates back into nothingness once again.
        Productive thoughts or pointless day dreaming? Before deciding, my attention was again diverted by a bird. This time a soaring turkey vulture. The mid-day sun created strong rising air thermals, so the vulture gradually circled higher and higher with no obvious effort except subtly adjusting its wings or tail one way or another to maintain stability or to change direction or altitude. The bird flew against a backdrop of blue sky and changing cloud patterns, reminding me of when I first saw a turkey vulture forty-one years earlier along the upper Mississippi River bluffs.
        The vulture, of course, is a bird of death, feeding on dead, decaying animals. Its message is the mortality of all life. Yet I find this not a depressing thought. For the bird causes me to recall many beautiful locations where I have watched soaring turkey vultures, from Arizona to Maryland, and what a joy it must be to sail effortlessly upon the winds, among the clouds.
        When I looked again at the telephone wires along the road, the bank swallows were gone. Perhaps they were bound for the nearby Illinois River and its backwaters, which undoubtedly offer a richer invertebrate life—fuel for their travels southward—than the insecticide-sprayed corn and soybean fields in the vicinity of my home. They might even share the same air space for a time with the young eagle at Quiver Lake that I am confident fledged only a few weeks before. So I turned back toward the house and prairie, which seemed more of an oasis than ever, and left my mind blank for a while.

 

 

Accordion Boy

 

By Thomas V. Lerczak

 

[Author's preface:  I first began making notes for this essay over twelve years ago in preparation for being interviewed at Dickson Mounds Museum, Lewistown, Illinois, as part of a series of programs the museum planned on American roots music (e.g., folk, mountain, blues, zydeco).  Up to that point, I had never thought that playing the accordion was much out of the ordinary or that anyone other than my mother would be interested in reading about it; but after seeing the videotape of the interview, which was part of the Smithsonian’s “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music” traveling exhibit, I realized that placing my accordion experiences into the larger context of history and personal growth could result in a unique and interesting story.  I hope that I have been successful in accomplishing that.  The following essay, first published in Sobatka Literary Magazine (Issue #8), is the result.]

    

The steady breeze that blew in from the west did little to relieve the afternoon’s heat and humidity. And so only one week into my retirement at age 60, I remained inside our air-conditioned bluff top cabin, playing one song after another on my guitar, gazing out across the backwaters and forests of the three-mile-wide Illinois River valley. The songs came easily from deep within as my right hand hammered out rhythms and tunes, and with only a small effort I recalled each song’s lyrics and their meanings while simultaneously thinking about the past, the idyllic scene in view, and what the future might hold. At times like this I have found it to be absolutely true that while playing a musical instrument, the mind enters a highly enhanced state of functioning and awareness on many levels. When I finished Martha Scanlan’s song “Little Bird of Heaven” with its final line “There’s a little bird of heaven right here in your hand,” I paused for a moment: Yes, there is, I thought, and how fortunate I have been to have music as such an integral part of my life, listening as well as playing.
        My maternal grandfather was the musician in our family. And his instrument of choice was the button accordion, a highly ornate, old-time instrument in the shape of a box that looked like it came straight out of the Middle Ages. There were sets of keys or buttons for the left and right hands to press with bellows in between. Moving the bellows in and out forced air through internal reeds which created the sounds. I don’t recall that my grandfather could read music; in fact, I believe that he played strictly “by ear,” meaning that the tunes were in his head, and he simply “knew” which buttons to press at the proper times. The right hand played the melody, while the left played the rhythm or bass which sounded like “oom pah pah, oom pah pah” for ¾ walzes, and “oom pah, oom pah” in 4/4 time. As a small boy, I thought he was a genius, and I longed for the day when I would be old enough to play a musical instrument.

 

Author's grandfather Vincent Zelizko on the button accordion, mid-1960s.

        Riding a great wave of European immigration to the United States following World War I, both my maternal grandparents came to the United States in 1922 from a part of Czechoslovakia called Bohemia. They brought along few material possessions from the “Old Country,” as they referred to Europe, but in their minds they carried the cultural richness of the home country in the form of secret food recipes, language, stories, and music. Like other European immigrants, my grandparents sought out folks like themselves who spoke their native language, much like anyone would do if transported to a strange foreign land. And with so many immigrants from different countries doing the same, major parts of large cities, like Chicago where they eventually settled, became composed of neighborhoods defined by ethnic origin or race. In these neighborhoods, the home cultures survived in reality, not just memory. In “Little Bohemia,” not surprisingly, the button accordion was king.
        Finally in 1966, at eight years of age, I was deemed old enough for music lessons. The Chicago Park District’s Lawndale Park offered lessons for several types of instruments, but my parents never really thought seriously about anything other than the accordion. I, however, was more open-minded. With The Beatles at the top of the music charts, I remember thinking that maybe guitar lessons were the way to go; my grandfather, though, scoffed at that idea; and the sad fact was that all of the guitar classes were full. But the accordion class had plenty of room for more students, and, besides this, I was assured by my grandfather that “The accordion player always gets the girls.” Of course, I was embarrassed by the idea of “getting girls,” but I thought if this instrument could influence females, maybe there was something to it, something even The Beatles were missing. In fact, who were George, Paul, John, and Ringo anyway compared to an accordion? So accordion lessons it was…for the next ten years.

 

The author in 1966.

Playing before a school assembly, 1966.

        Progress was a bit slow at first, though, probably because I was only a few steps behind my music teacher at the park, who could barely play. My grandfather occasionally tried to offer a little guidance, but I was learning on the more modern piano accordion (with keys for the right hand similar to a piano), which he could not play. And at my lessons I was being taught to play from written music, and discouraged from playing by ear, as this was thought to be undisciplined and merely made-up music. So my grandfather and I never really teamed up, although he did teach me the tunes of several Czech folk songs, which I continued to play without written music. Those songs, in particular, made my 67-year-old grandmother smile, even while she may also have been thinking of the times when she carried my 20-pound accordion a half mile to my school for “Show and Tell.”
        By the summer of 1967, I could read simple music and had shown at least a rudimentary ability. And so I was encouraged to enter Lawndale Park’s annual talent contest, where I would be in competition with other children who were taking music or dance lessons at the park. It was stiff competition, indeed, especially the little girl in a ballerina costume and one boy whose parents had purchased a professional accordion system for him called a Cordovox. I thought they probably spent many thousands of dollars on that equipment, which consisted of an electronic piano accordion with four suitcase-sized amplifiers that could sound like an organ. Where did he come from? I wondered. I didn’t remember seeing him at any of the accordion lessons. There was no way I would win.
        On the evening of the talent show, the park district’s auditorium was packed. The audience’s size, by my conservative estimate through the fog of 50 years, must have been at least 200. And the park district staff were highly excited by the turnout, which added to the anticipation and my anxiety of playing before a large crowd. As I stood backstage and peeked through the curtains, I could see several of my neighborhood friends, including the girl who lived across the street from me, sitting in the front row; she would soon be impressed, I thought, and be putty in my hands, although I had no idea what to do if that actually happened.
        Soon the show began. I was too nervous to pay much attention to the first several acts which quickly passed, and then it was my turn. I plugged my small accordion into the amplifier system, and with an anxious stomach waited for my introduction. After the curtain abruptly opened, I stood there ready to puke. The stage lights blinded me to all but the first few rows of the audience. In the sidelines I saw my music teacher nodding to me: Play! And so I began a song called “Juke Box Rock,” with my left hand pounding out the bass rhythm, “oom pah, oom pah, oom pah, oom pah,” which I could feel through the floor. I played with no mistakes, this song I had practiced maybe 100 times (my poor family), but it was quickly over. The audience cheered and clapped. I stood there in shock, probably with my mouth hanging open, and the curtain closed.
        A few more acts followed and then a short break ensued so the Cordovox system could be set up for the last act. When the curtains opened, it was as if we were engulfed by no less than the mighty Heavens; the kid was a deity and his Cordovox was magical; it looked like an accordion, but it sounded like a mixture of smooth organ-like sounds, deep bass notes, and haunting violins, a triumphant combination of talent and electronics. After this performance, I think there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who would win first place.
        Finally, all of the participants were called to the stage to stand together as the judges announced the winners. The kid with the Cordovox , of course, took the first place trophy. I have no recollection who won second place, but then as the third place winner was announced, everyone began looking at me, and I realized that it was my name being called. The door had opened to accordion stardom.
        But the next year saw only minor progress in my playing. I learned many new songs, but I was not learning proper technique or increasingly complex music. My music teacher admitted that he had done all he could with me, given his own limited abilities, and suggested I pursue private lessons with a professional accordion player. And so, I became a student of Tommy Kosatka in Cicero, with one-on-one meetings once per week. I played scales over and over, and learned proper fingering techniques, chords, how to play songs in different keys, and how to improvise, which to me seemed very similar to playing by ear. I learned how to read and play more complex music and how to add a personal touch to an arrangement. Mr. Kosatka challenged me to do better and not be afraid of any music, no matter how complicated; I would simply learn pages and pages of music one measure at a time over a period of weeks. I learned rock, jazz, pop, crooner ballads, and, of course, polkas. Many polkas. These lessons provided a firm foundation in musical theory with the precision of mathematics.

 

[Listen to the author playing "Night Train" on a recording made in the early 1970s 

Download Night Train TVL early 1970s.]

        While all of this was happening, though, my musical tastes were changing as I became older, especially after I entered high school. Like most kids, I listened to music on the top 40 AM pop stations in the 1960s. None of this included accordion music, except maybe as a background instrument. So I did not listen to accordion music for enjoyment or inspiration. The Lawrence Welk Show, of course, had accordion music. But Lawrence Welk was…well…Lawrence Welk. Squaresville. None of my friends watched this program; their parents did, of course. But how could parents know anything about what was good? Polkas were from the Old Country. I had entered the rebellious teenage phase of rejecting the older generation and their music.
        And while I continued to take accordion lessons, by the early 1970s I became drawn to music that had deeper meanings or stories in the lyrics. Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about the riverboat “Proud Mary” and leaving a job in the city, “working for the man every night and day.” In “Me and Bobby McGee,” Janis Joplin sang about being free, owning little, and drifting around the country, where “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I was drawn to singers like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Tom T. Hall who sang about working and living hard, and the challenges faced in everyday living. Bob Dylan’s sardonic lyrics, commentaries on society’s ills, struck many nerves. And during this time period, the world was literally about to blow up. The Cold War and thermonuclear threat were raging, with the Soviet leader shouting that his country would bury us. There was the Vietnam War, the maniacal Cultural Revolution in China, war in the Middle East, starvation in Bangladesh and Africa, the 60s assassinations, civil rights protests and riots in our cities including my hometown Chicago, air and water pollution getting worse, hippies and free love, and we were putting men on the Moon.
        Through all of this, I played the accordion, diligently learning the music Mr. Kosatka placed in front of me. But it was not long before he could tell that something was missing, and I felt that too. I was competently learning to play the notes, some very complicated songs, but I now know that what was lacking was the heart, a connection to the inner soul and life experience. Just playing the notes as written is not enough; true emotion must be a part of the playing, and that must be real, not something to be produced on demand. When I listened to recordings of my accordion playing, I could hear that something was missing, which was not so apparent when I was actually playing the music. One day when it became clear that I was unprepared for my lesson, Mr. Kosatka finally asked me: “What kind of music do you listen to? What do you want to play?” He rightly knew that the songs I listened to on my record player and on the radio were the ones I should be playing on the accordion; these songs, he hoped, would make that important personal connection to the music and put the heart into my playing. So I bought song books by Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Creedence, and others, plus assorted sheet music of songs I heard on the radio. I played “Proud Mary” and “Me and Bobby McGee” on the accordion. It kind of worked for a while, providing some new inspiration, but there was still something missing. While I played the tunes, I would hear the lyrics in my head; I needed something more than the accordion could offer, especially since in the end, they all still sounded like polkas from the Old Country. Now, a polka may be a fine piece of music, but the fact is that certain types of instruments sound best for certain types of music; one would not attempt “Stairway to Heaven,” for example, on the tuba, although the results might be amusing. I did not wish to be amusing.
        After I graduated from high school, I stopped the accordion lessons, mainly because for a couple of years, I was no longer advancing, and both the teacher and student seemed to be out of ideas. I think Mr. Kosatka knew this too, but he was not about to suggest that a paying student discontinue; if I stayed under his tutelage for the rest of my life, I think he would have been fine with that.
        In the late 1960s and 1970s a part of Chicago’s north side was at the epicenter of a folk music renaissance that produced such icons as John Prine and the late Steve Goodman, as well as the renowned Old Town School of Folk Music. As it turned out, I was able to experience the tail end of this musically rich period, especially at the same time that disco was taking over the airwaves and popular night spots; and this resulted in my musical tastes moving further from accordion music. A key factor was that in 1976, the year I turned 19, the state of Illinois, in its wisdom, lowered the drinking age for beer and wine from 21 to 19; I’m not sure of their rationale, but after only a few years, and probably a lot of DUIs, it was back again to 21. But this brief period opened up a great opportunity, and I wasted no time gathering up a few friends for some serious bar hopping. And not being familiar with any bars, I first looked at the entertainment section of the local newspaper for a place to try out my new drinking privileges. One item stood out: The Bitter Creek Newgrass Band at the Clearwater Saloon on Chicago’s Lincoln Avenue.
        From the outside the Clearwater Saloon looked a bit dingy. From the inside it appeared authentically rustic from years of hard use and benign neglect, rather than from the creative mind of a degreed interior designer; it was a comfortable atmosphere that smelled of wood and long-ago spilled beer. My kind of place. As the only customers early on a Friday evening, we had our choice of tables; so we awkwardly chose one, ordered our first pitcher of Beck’s dark beer, looked around, and waited for something to happen. Gradually over the next hour, more patrons entered along with the band, who began setting up equipment, tuning instruments, and initiating their own night of drinking. Judging from the appeal of bluegrass music in those years, I kind of expected a much older, rather conservatively dressed crowd, maybe even a family-like atmosphere, as bluegrass music tends to have a strong gospel component. But this was “newgrass,” whatever that was. By ten o’clock, the bar had a full crowd with every table occupied, and they were mostly younger folks, probably with an average age of between 25 and 30. The band itself was composed of five unpretentious long-haired characters in faded denim that looked right at home at what might be called a “dirt bar.”

 

The Clearwater Saloon, late 1970s or early 80s.

        As we moved into our third pitcher of beer, the band—with banjo, bass, two acoustic guitars, and mandolin—finally launched into its first song. When they finished, the place erupted in an explosion of applause, yelling, stomping, and whooping. I had never seen a bluegrass audience react in such a way. By the middle of the first set, folks were dancing between the tables with a couple of blue jean-clad young ladies, with long flowing hair, dancing on top of the bar between glasses and bottles. The band played more traditional bluegrass songs plus bluegrass versions of songs by Creedence, The Grateful Dead, and other contemporary country and rock artists (i.e., newgrass). I felt at home and more connected to this music than any I had ever played on the accordion, and I was reluctant to leave even as the midnight hour had long passed.

 

[Listen to a scratchy live recording made at the Clearwater Saloon in 1977 of the Bitter Creek Newgrass Band playing Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Lodi." Download Bitter Creek at Clearwater Saloon 1977]

 
        My friends and I returned often to the Clearwater Saloon. But its heyday continued only for another two or three years, when it seemed the main customer base settled elsewhere and the somewhat rickety building itself seemed to be about played out. In a few years, its doors would close for the last time.
        I have never experienced another establishment quite like the Clearwater Saloon, where the audience was truly in sync with the live music. I think those years may have been an example of a short-lived, unique convergence of social and cultural trends that can never be deliberately duplicated. Were it not for the brief change in the legal drinking age, I may have missed it completely. It was great fun, but also educational as it opened my mind to new styles of playing familiar tunes as my musical tastes continued to evolve. Even so, throughout all of this, I was faithful in maintaining my accordion-playing skills, but less and less as the years went by. I eventually attended a university in southern Illinois, and I took my accordion with me. And it was with me still when I later moved near the Illinois River and began working as a natural resources manager.
        One day, a friend down the road, at his home along the river bluffs, held a yard party. Several of his friends played guitar and one was very good on the harmonica. With the river valley as a backdrop, they sang as the sun set beyond the western river bluffs, then under starry skies, and well into the early morning. Their songs included many of my favorites from Dylan and Creedence. I could not help being reminded of certain rowdy evenings at the Clearwater Saloon, nearly two decades in the past. Their playing was straightforward and loose, the kind of playing one learned by ear or made up on the spot with a few lyrics and simple chords. They had fun, and I had fun listening. And I thought, yes, I could do this too. The next day, I unpacked a guitar which I had acquired a decade before but never learned to play. Determined not to give up, I would play the guitar at least as well as I could play the accordion, maybe even better.
        At first I was a bit daunted. Holding down strings with my left hand to make the chords was a painful process until my fingertips toughened up. And I discovered that a stringed instrument requires a gentler touch and more subtle movements than an accordion’s keys, buttons, and bellows. The slightest shift in position or touch on the strings in one direction or another can produce vastly different sounds and effects. And while music theory is the same for any instrument, as in the order of notes and chord patterns, the relationship between player and instrument could not be more different. I also had never sung before and did not even feel that I had a decent singing voice, let alone learning a song’s lyrics and meshing those lyrics with a tune and timing the guitar’s rhythms. But then singers such as Dylan, Kristofferson, and John Prine showed that having a melodious singing voice was not necessarily a requirement. (Of course, it is possible to sing along with an accordion, but I decided not to go there.)
        Quality of voice notwithstanding, singing was one of the missing pieces, because the lyrics were important; with the lyrics came the stories and the emotions tied to those stories. To memorize a set of lyrics, I had to think about what they meant, and those with personal meanings were the easiest to learn. For most songs, I may not have lived the stories, but by relating them to my life in a realistic way, I could make the words flow without much effort, each verse logically following another as the stories unfolded. Unlike playing the accordion, it was not necessary to imagine the lyrics. With the guitar, all of the pieces were there, the physical act of playing and the emotional or intellectual part, the meaning and deep truth behind the songs; as when I’m singing Woody Guthrie’s songs of the dust bowl era in the 1930s, I imagine walking down a dirt road in Oklahoma among grassland covered hills, billowy clouds overhead, dry winds blowing through my hair. Each song is its own journey.
        For the last twenty years, then, the guitar has become my instrument of choice. And so, what has become of the accordion boy? After a few years of exclusively playing the guitar, I actually started to miss the keyboard. So I obtained an electronic keyboard that can duplicate the sounds of many musical instruments including drums; in fact, it can put the old 1960s Cordovox to shame. I usually play it in the grand piano mode, where my accordion skills easily transfer. The accordion, I rarely unpack. But as it turns out, my wife has always loved the accordion and polkas. Soon after we met, both in our 40s, she became overjoyed to learn that I was an accordion player. I think it even helped solidify our relationship. So only for her, the girl that I finally “got,” I will, on occasion, play the “Baby Doll Polka,” written in 1954 by Eddie Korosa, a button accordion player personally known to my grandfather. And to my surprise, so many years after I had first learned the tune, I discovered that the simple lyrics actually do resonate as a deep, yet simple, truth.

        You are my Baby Doll

        You are my Baby Doll

        You are my Baby Doll

        You’re my darling now.

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        You’re my sweetheart now.

 

 

 

[Download a PDF file of "Accordion Boy" here:  Download Accordion Boy for Kindle.]

 

 

 

 

The Shrinking Comfort Zone

 

I’m longing to ride on a freight trail, and be a good old American guest. – from Good Old American Guest by Merle Haggard

 

On a late afternoon in mid-September, I sat at the timber’s edge, watching our two highly active honey bee hives: so many bees every few seconds flying out of the hives, out over the prairie and beyond; and just as many returning. Except for gusty winds blowing through the tree canopy, all was quiet, with not much else going on. I was well within the comfort zone, and there was no reason to upset the apple cart, as the old saying goes. And yet, something gently pulled at me, a vague notion that I was missing an opportunity; the pull was not strong like it was when I was young, but it was definitely there.
        Despite occasionally feeling that I should be doing something else, I remained sitting for a long while. And with my wife running errands, I then spent the rest of the afternoon reading, playing the guitar, and walking the home trails. I was at peace, enjoying my surroundings, feeling calm and secure. In the outside world, there were many potentially harmful unknowns; but not here. So at sixty-one and retired, I may have finally understood some of what my seventy-six-year-old grandmother may have felt so many decades ago: Frustrated with a mere week’s worth of vacation from work each year, I once approached her and asked, “Since you’ve got the time, why don’t you travel?” “Not for me,” she answered. For her, whose first language was still Czech after being a U.S. citizen for over half a century, the increasingly complex environment beyond her small brick bungalow must have seemed overwhelmingly daunting, full of dangerous risks. The outside world may have been pulling at her, but she was strong willed and quite firmly rooted.
        Throughout life, the comfort zone develops for a reason; of course, there is a fear of the unknown involved, but I think the boundaries develop more as a result of experience, finding out what works and what doesn’t as a reflection of one’s unique personality, abilities, desires, and knowledge. At some point, what is “not for me” becomes clear. At the same time, it is important to test or redefine the boundaries, gently pushing the envelope with an open heart and mind. If I had not done so, I may never have taken that first trip to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, ridden a motorcycle across the northern Great Plains, taken a solo canoe-camping trip on Missouri’s Current River, sung and played my guitar before a large gathering, left a good job to pursue a degree, given a lecture on ecology to a room full of college students, or felt comfortable with a smartphone. While safe at home, the outside world pulling at me is a prompt to ask, What else am I capable of?
        Whenever I’m at our Quiver Lake cabin, I’ll always take at least a few minutes to simply sit and look out across the 3.5-mile-wide Illinois River valley to the distant bluffs of Fulton County. It’s a beautiful view of forests, bluffs, wetlands, and open water that I can never have enough of. But it also makes me want to grab my canoe, cross the lake, and head to the Illinois River beyond, just to see what is there that is different from the last trip. Most of the time, just thinking about it is enough, and I’ll go back to reading my book. But then there is the rare occasion when a seed has been planted, and I may begin thinking of longer trips. Most of them never happen, but for those that do, the actual planning, especially with my wife, can be like a shot of adrenalin and my enthusiasm soars. A few weeks later, after going over numerous maps and reading a stack of background materials, I sometimes feel as if I’ve experienced a journey weeks before even leaving the driveway.

                                               * * *
For most of her life, my grandmother was never really much of a traveler, although she did sail across the Atlantic Ocean in rough seas and pass through New York’s Ellis Island at age 22 to begin her new life in the United States at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. And she did return twice, as I recall, to her native Czechoslovakia with my grandfather, where he, in fact, died on their last trip in 1973. Upon returning to Chicago alone in a 747 jet, with her cremated husband in an urn, she never traveled again. (I now realize that I was insensitive when asking her about why she no longer traveled, by not taking that experience into account.)
        But I suppose a shrinking comfort zone is a natural tendency with advanced age, even without any great tragedies (for example, these days I would never consider traveling cross country on a motorcycle). It may not be possible to stop this gradual process, especially if health issues become a complication. But I am convinced that it can and must be resisted, lest one becomes too constrained and maybe even immobilized in an inescapable and perhaps uncomfortable safely net. 

 

                                Grandmother with Miska, 1980s

 

 

Sandpiper at Twenty-three Degrees

 

"The Earth from here [the Moon] is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space." – Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 Astronaut

 

Following months of flooding, the Illinois River was finally approaching what might be termed its normal, low-water level for the summer. The sandy beach and seeps at Quiver Lake were once again exposed. Great egrets, great blue herons, and killdeer could now find appropriate foraging areas in the shallows. And Caspian terns and ring-billed gulls gathered on exposed mud flats further from shore. I sat on the bluff side just above the beach and tried to avoid thinking about the daunting task before me: clearing the beach of the massive tangles of twigs, branches, and large logs left behind from the floodwaters.
        Then a slight movement at the water’s edge caught my attention: a lone shorebird called a pectoral sandpiper, walking along in the wet sand and occasionally grabbing minute food items from the ground. It was early August, and the fall shorebird migration had begun; many other species would follow and perhaps thousands of individuals. I stood still and thought about this small bird, traveling from its high Arctic nesting area to South American overwintering habitats, stopping briefly at this particular location in Illinois to gather enough food energy to continue its journey. It’s easy to feel insignificant when faced with a small bird capable of such a great feat, recognizing no international boundaries, local authorities, or governments. An authentic being of the world that illustrates how truly connected and one this world really is.
        And yet my thoughts immediately veered in the opposite direction. And I was struck by the fact that although the earth may be an interconnected whole from a sandpiper’s perspective, from the standpoint of geopolitics, it may never have been more fragmented…and, of course, dangerous. I feel safe at my home and lakeside cabin in a quiet rural atmosphere far from any major city, and most of the time, life is relatively carefree. But it is really the privilege of living in the United States that allows this life, just one result of all who have sacrificed and fought for such a country to exist. The daily news helps keep me in touch with the rest of the world, but most of it is not good, reminding me of murderous ideologies, corruption, oppression, and, what seem to be, insurmountable obstacles to progress. I want to know what is happening; but the newspaper is not an inducement for international travel.
        Unlike me, though, the sandpipers that I watch along the beach have no choice. They must make the yearly journeys across the globe to complete breeding cycles and survive to the next season, immersed in their own world of continual danger; high alertness and wariness are quite obvious as the sandpipers frequently check surroundings for predators, who are themselves highly attuned to any gap in the sandpipers’ defense strategies. To these creatures, danger is ever present as an accepted fact of life.
        In any case, it is the long summer days on the northern tundra combined with a superabundance of insect life make the migration worth the risk and effort. At the other extreme of each year are nights equally as long as the summer daylight hours but with brutal, freezing weather. And, of course, it is these extreme seasonal changes that shaped bird migration in the beginning, a direct result of the Earth’s axial tilt of 23.5 degrees relative to the ecliptic plane, defined as a baseline by the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun. What if the tilt angle were zero? Then equal hours of daylight and night time would occur on each day at all latitudes, not just on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, which would no longer exist. It’s the tilt, in fact, that causes the seasons—during summer, the Earth’s axis is tilted toward the Sun; and during winter, the tilt is away from the Sun—so with zero tilt, there would be no seasons. In that situation, for example, what is now Arctic tundra in northern Canada would probably be a perpetual winter. Without pronounced seasonal cycles, how differently evolved would be the planet’s biological communities (tundra, boreal forest, tropical rain forest, desert, grassland, etc.) and how would they be distributed across the globe? What would bird migration patterns be like?
        An interesting aspect of this thought experiment is that there is nothing special about 23.5 degrees. Billions of years ago, a chance collision of the Earth with a planet-sized object is thought to have caused the tilt (i.e., pushed the Earth over), which happened to settle out at 23.5 degrees, plus or minus a certain amount of variation on a 40,000-year cycle. (Although I write this in a rather matter-of-fact manner, the unimaginable violence of such an event has not escaped me.) Other planets in the Solar System have different axial tilts; for example, Jupiter is only 3 degrees, while Uranus is at 98 degrees (so Uranus, in effect, rolls around the Sun on its side).

 

Photo from Apollo 8, downloaded from NASA.

        Following such thoughts, the images meandering through my mind are far removed from the Illinois River backwaters and pectoral sandpipers. Then as my consciousness returns closer to home, I recall the iconic image of Earth from 1968, captured by the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. In that photograph, the Earth appears as an interconnected whole. The sandpiper’s perspective! But, with its thin wisp of an atmosphere, our one and only home planet, shining against the dead blackness of space, also seems fragile, vulnerable, and…quite improbable.

 

References

Kutter, G.S. 1987. The universe and life. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. Boston/Portola Valley.

All About Birds. www.allaboutbirds.org referenced 14 August 2019.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. www.nasa.gov referenced 14 August 2019.

Universe Today. www.universetoday.com referenced 14 August 2019.

 

The Wind's Gift

Both the Illinois River and its connected backwater Quiver Lake were at 26.64 feet, near a record high flood level. So it seemed like a good opportunity to canoe over the flooded forests to photograph Quiver Lake’s active bald eagle nest. But while still at home making plans, the wind already blew a bit high, though not high enough to cancel canoeing. Later in the day, it was supposed to top out at about 12 miles per hour, which is not too bad, especially within the protection of the floodplain forest.
        When I arrived at the Quiver Lake cabin about 10:30, the wind seemed much higher than 12 miles per hour. So I climbed down to the flooded sandy beach to assess the situation. Would I even be able to launch through all of the floating logs and other woody debris?
        Launching would be possible, but cumbersome. Then the wind seemed to pick up speed even in the short time since my arrival—no whitecaps yet, but that was only a matter of time. Still, I thought, if I could make it across the lake, the water would be calmer in the lee of the forest. Was it worth the fight, though? The young adventurer in me shouted, Yes, go for it! But the safety monkey on my back said, There will be better opportunities on another day. So I stood there in a mental quagmire, unable to move.
        And then I saw what was clearly the head of a swimming animal moving past about 30 feet away under the lower branches of a silver maple tree. My first thought was: beaver. It was too large for a muskrat. Finally, the animal moved out from beneath the tree and swam into the open water. Then I saw the long tail. This was a river otter!

 

Quiver Lake's flooded beach (Illinois River at 26.64 feet, May 9, 2019)

        The wind blew toward me, so the otter may have been unaware of my presence. Standing perfectly still, I made a “sh sh” sound to attract its attention; the otter’s beady eyes stared straight in my direction, then it immediately climbed onto a floating log for a better view, then a second later slid like a fat snake back into the water, swimming back and forth, over and under floating logs, still not sure what made that strange sound.
        My camera was in the car. So I thought if I quietly and carefully climbed the stairway back up the bluff for the camera, maybe I could get a photograph. But when I returned, the otter was gone. Canoeing plans may have been thwarted by the wind, but what a great compensation I received instead.

 

The Tree Swallow Threshold

By the middle of March here in central Illinois, signs of the transitioning seasons have been apparent for several weeks, although most are easily missed, such as the minor swelling of buds on what otherwise appear to be dormant plants. Changes in bird behavior or the sudden appearance of some species and lack of others are more obvious. But even with the birds, one has to be attentive to subtleties.

        On Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge’s Beer-can Trail, which follows the bluff top for a half-mile before dropping to the shoreline, the cool winds robbed much of the warmth from under my thin jacket. I walked quickly. Abundant lesser scaup and ruddy ducks bobbed within the white-capped waves of the refuge’s north pool; bright black and white male buffleheads occasionally stood out in contrast from the other waterfowl. Bald eagles soared over the refuge as they had all through the winter. Silver maple trees along the Illinois River showed a hint of pink from millions of miniature flower buds nearly ready to open. Though I panned back and forth with binoculars, there was little else to draw my attention. So I rested on a log for a few minutes behind a sheltering bur oak tree, picked out a bald eagle nest on the far side of the refuge, and then, because the lower shoreline return loop was submerged in flood waters, walked back on the same trail.

 

Trail intersection at Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, Mason Co.

 

        Before heading home, I stopped at our Quiver Lake cabin, still shut down for the winter. Half way down the steps to the sandy beach, I trained my spotting scope on a bald eagle nest, just barely visible above the floodplain forest canopy between Quiver Lake and the Illinois River. An eagle perched on a dead branch above the nest. I looked forward to watching the young eaglets develop in the coming months.

        On the beach, I sat back in a comfortable chair, scanning the water and skies; and within a few minutes, found what I searched for all day (March 17th): the first tree swallows of the year. Several flew over the lake with more over the floodplain forest.

        The tree swallows mark a significant threshold in the spring bird migration. They are aerial insectivores, picking individual insects out of the air without a hitch as they fly up to great heights, dip down to the water level, climb back up to higher altitudes, or sharply turn as if pulled with reins—wherever an insect is detected. Energy is burned and replenished at the same time. Without the insects, the swallows would stay further south. Individuals that I saw were, in fact, the vanguard; if winter briefly returned with Arctic winds and snow, these birds would suffer, or possibly die; if not, they would have the first choice of the best nesting cavities. It’s a gamble. But this is how species adapt to expand their ranges or alter migration timing. Individuals are always testing the edge, pushing the envelope.

        More species will soon follow, now that the trees swallows have led the way. But my notes from previous years show that eastern phoebes, a flycatcher, should have already arrived. In some others years, American hazelnut began blooming in late February; this year it was mid-March. The seasonal transition seems a bit behind schedule. But is it? The timing of events in nature from year to year is an illustration of how variability is an inherent quality of nature, which is more like an ancient grandfather clock with slightly worn gears than a modern, precisely engineered Rolex watch. So taking that into consideration, this particular season seems to be right on track.

Not a Good Day for Canoeing

        For several days I had looked forward to today’s (October 17th) weather; the forecast was for sunny skies, temperatures in the lower fifties, with sustained winds no more than 10 miles per hour. Also, the Illinois River was well into its usual fall rise, following the low waters of late summer, when even a canoe would have trouble in the shallow backwaters of Quiver Lake. I longed to be in my canoe, heading across the backwaters to the river beyond, a day to be lost to the elements. But a simple glance at the treetops around my home, three miles from the river, showed that even at mid-morning, the wind was strong, reaching at least to the forecasted high level.
        So before heading to the cabin on Quiver Lake and my canoe, I took a slight detour to Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge to test the winds, so to speak. Here I felt nearly thrust forward into mid-winter as the cold northwest winds came screaming off the refuge’s vast open waters and lowland marshes. I bundled up with scarf and winter hat, scanning with my spotting scope at the distant rafts of waterfowl bobbing in the roiling waves, but was soon defeated by the frigid wind chills. There were gadwall, northern pintail, mallard, ruddy ducks, northern shovelers, a lone ring-necked duck, and Canada geese; at one point, a bald eagle flew low over the ducks causing many to fly in various directions, providing a scene of confusion to a formidable predator.
        Leaving the refuge I recalled that only ten days before I was lamenting the hot, humid weather that made it feel like July all over again. Most of the trees had yet to change color, but it already felt like winter. In truth, paddling a canoe I could have handled the 15 mile per hour winds and higher gusts, but it would have been hard work maintaining a constant direction, especially if the wind blew crosswise in open waters. So feeling rather low on energy at mid-day, I instead opted for a quiet afternoon at the Quiver Lake cabin, reading, playing my guitar, perhaps a nap or two, and feeding wood to the fireplace.

Bird Song Cabin at Quiver Lake

 

        Later I would walk down the bluffs to the sandy waterfront and view the lake, sky, and forests of the opposite lakeshore. From that vantage point I would hear a towboat-barge chugging along on the river about a mile away, leisurely watch a large group of American white pelicans soaring ever higher on the high winds, search for the last few tree swallows of the season, and question my decision to stay shore bound…especially knowing that truly cold weather would soon arrive for months, and canoeing would not even be an option.

Backwater Morning – A Season in Transition

        The sun had been up for four hours by the time I arrived at the Quiver Lake cabin, but vestiges of an early July morning held on: a blue-tint calm, quiet waters perfectly mirroring the morning sky, the feeling and smell of the night’s humidity, and a fragile peace awaiting the day’s first intrusion. I placed my chair under a tall cottonwood tree and relaxed in the shade of the Illinois River valley bluffs. In a few moments, as an immature bald eagle flew over the lake, harassed by an irritated tree swallow, a Carolina wren sounded off behind me; and a prothonotary warbler, warbling vireo, and house wren sang from the flooded bottomland forests across the lake. I listened closely for singing Baltimore orioles, but heard not one; like other years, the orioles are less vocal by early July. It was a subtle sign, not hearing a bird song, but one that clearly identified the season progressing toward autumn.

        The gradually falling lake level, happening over several weeks, showed that the protracted spring flood of the Illinois River and its backwaters was in its final stages, moving toward the usual low-water period of summer and early fall. Though some bottomlands were still under shallow water, if the river continued to fall, following the normal pattern, Quiver Lake would eventually be too shallow for boats, and large expanses would show exposed lake bottom (mud flats), attractive to migrating shorebirds.

        Along the lakeshore, vegetation was recovering from weeks of being inundated by flood waters. Wild grape vines made up for lost time, beginning to cover the large piles of woody debris (large logs, branches of all sizes stripped of bark, and natural mulch created from wood being sorted and re-sorted during wave action) left behind from the floods. While it was still fairly cool, I decided to clear a pathway to the shore leading to my favorite observation post beneath a small silver maple tree and between two swamp privet thickets; there was a lot of wood to move, so I grabbed only enough for a narrow passageway to the water. Being at the shoreline reminded me that on June 27th there was a massive emergence of mayflies, with thousands of individuals covering the shoreline vegetation, flying about in the gentle lake breezes, and writhing on the ground in great numbers, just before dying; such activity must have been occurring all along Quiver Lake’s shoreline. But during this recent visit, only six days later, not a single live mayfly did I find, and the many dead bodies in the shoreline debris of twigs, wood chips, and leaves were barely discernable. In the shallows—which slowly flowed southward toward the lower end of Quiver Lake, where the lake imperceptibly merges with the Illinois River—I noticed thousands of small fish, each no more than about an inch long, the results of a highly successful spawning season during the spring flood. These fish would be drawn outward from shore with a falling lake level.

        The exertion of untangling branches and moving wood eventually sapped my energy. And the sun’s heat had clearly won its daily battle with night’s coolness. So I returned to my shaded chair to rest. I always bring several books to read when I plan to spend a few hours or a day at the Quiver Lake cabin, but not at the expense of also spending time simply observing my surroundings, trying not to miss important events that last only seconds. Even while reading I often looked up to glance back and forth; so at one of those moments, just after a john boat zoomed past, I caught sight of an osprey flying from downriver toward Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, only two-thirds of a mile north from where I sat. There is an active osprey nest at the refuge, so this bird was likely one of the pair. Later a Caspian tern flew past, making its distinctive call; not an Illinois breeder, the presence of this bird along the Illinois River valley signifies the post-breeding season for this species, another sign of the season in transition.

 

Quiver Lake with distant Chautauqua NWR

 

        And so the morning developed: a cucumber breakfast sandwich, reading a few pages, a calling pileated woodpecker, quarrelling red-headed woodpeckers, more reading, a distant American white pelican over Chautauqua Refuge, a calling yellow-billed cuckoo from the tree above; and I suddenly noticed that the bright sun at its zenith, which glared off the water and sky, had greatly diminished my shade. This signaled the time had come to move on with the day, and maybe accomplish something. So I gathered up my chair and other gear, and climbed the river bluff back to the cabin, nestled in the shade of many surrounding trees. The morning was satisfying; and although the summer was young, as a person who prefers cooler weather, it felt good to see signs of the season already transitioning toward fall.

Quiver Lake bird list, July 3, 2017

Double-crested cormorant
American white pelican
Bald eagle (immature)
Osprey
Killdeer
Caspian Tern
Ring-billed gull
Mourning dove
Yellow-billed cuckoo
Downy woodpecker
Red-bellied woodpecker
Red-headed woodpecker
Northern flicker
Pileated woodpecker
Great-crested flycatcher
Eastern wood-pewee
Warbling vireo
Barn swallow
Tree swallow
White-breasted nuthatch
Tufted titmouse
House wren
Carolina wren
American robin
Gray catbird
European starling
Prothonotary warbler
Common grackle
Red-winged blackbird
Brown-headed cowbird
American goldfinch

 

A Lesson Learned

Or, What would Lewis and Clark have said? 

         I had been spending quite a bit of time this winter indoors, so while a warming trend held, I treated myself to a day in the field to visit and monitor the state of various central Illinois nature preserves.  One site that I had neglected for a couple of years was the 172-acre Letcher Basin Land and Water Reserve, on the Mackinaw River bottomlands in Woodford County. 

          With snow only recently melted, the ground was wet, but when the gravel ended on the county road, the road surface turned soft and slightly muddy.  Over the years, I had learned to respect a muddy road, and so I gingerly proceeded, knowing that stopping on a muddy road is sometimes the worst thing a person can do.  When the road led straight down the river bluff, I was tempted to turn around.  But the wheels maintained traction, and so I proceeded onward.  At the dead end, I parked on slightly higher ground.  I would deal with getting back up the bluff road later; I wasn’t worried…much, and prepared for my hike.  I had a four-wheel drive truck, after all, not like that infamous afternoon in Montana years ago.

          The year was 1997, and I took my new Dodge minivan for a test drive out West.  While in Montana, I wanted to camp along the upper Missouri River, along the National Wild and Scenic section, upstream of the large reservoirs of the Dakotas, to where the river resembled, more than any other stretch, what Lewis and Clark first saw in 1805.

          At the Wild and Scenic Rivers visitor’s center in Fort Benton, I explained my intentions to the young National Park Service ranger, whose demeanor and bouncy enthusiasm suggested a certain degree of naivety.  But I carefully and seriously listened to her detailed directions to an “awesome” campsite that hardly anyone knew about, where it would be very quiet and secluded:  just the river and me.  She waved good-bye and said, “Have fun.”  I said, “Okay,” and I was on my way.

          The park ranger’s directions were accurate in every detail; she had obviously been to the area many times, and I felt bad because I thought that such a young person would be inexperienced and not really know what she was talking about.  After about a half mile, the gravel ended, but the road’s surface was solid and dry.  Before heading to the camp site, I parked off to the side and climbed the bluff for a view of the Missouri River valley, and it was just as I had imagined.  How great this night would be, I remember thinking:  just the river and me.  For the hour or so that I spend on the bluff top, no other vehicles came down the road.  It was another good sign.

          Delaying no longer, then, I drove onward, as the road hugged the base of the river bluff, looking for a side trail, as described by the park ranger, that was wide enough to drive on, and that would lead to a lower lying area (the camp site) next to the river.  After continuing on for only a short time, I found the trail, and saw that it followed a steep incline of about ten feet before leveling out in a small grove of scattered cottonwood trees.  Caution kept me from driving on the trail down the drop off.  I was not used to what types of conditions my new minivan could handle, but the steep drop off looked challenging for any vehicle under any circumstances.  So I parked along the roadside next to the bluff, and walked down to the camp site to investigate the possibilities.

          It would be primitive camping, indeed.  But I had plenty of water and food, and all of my camping gear.  I was ready.  I imagined a perfect night with only the sounds of the flowing river, wind in the trees, owls and coyotes calling.  And then I felt the first drops of rain.

          I had no idea of the forecast and did not think to ask the park ranger, who also did not think to provide that information.  It could be one storm cloud followed by clear skies or the beginnings of a day or more with heavy rain.  As the rain’s intensity increased, I reluctantly gave up the idea of camping.  Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery would have been disgusted.  I felt wimpy.  So I started the minivan‘s engine and waited.  Would the rain stop?  That did not look likely, and I was so glad that I chose not to drive down the steep trail, now an incline of slippery mud, to the low-lying camp site.  Why hadn’t the park ranger cautioned me against doing that?  As the rain continued, I slipped the van into drive, and feeling glum, recalled a motel on the edge of town.

 

Fort Benton, Montana (from the Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce)

 

          Immediately the van’s front wheels (front-wheel drive) began losing traction.  I noticed the road was slick as I walked back to the van, but I had never experienced anything like this.  It’s called Missouri gumbo:  clay with unique mineral characteristics that make it hard as pavement when dry, but extremely slippery, to a biblical degree, with even a small amount of water.  As I drove forward, the van slipped and slid from one side of the road to the other, just barely under my control.  On a slight rise in the road, the front wheels could gain no traction, sending mud flying onto the windshield, with the van eventually sliding backward and to the side of the road.  The river was not far beyond, and if it had not been for a slight shoulder along the road, the van would have slid directly into the river.  What I needed was momentum.  So I drove in reverse for about 100 feet, and started forward, making it almost to the top of the rise, wheels spinning furiously, before sliding back down along the road’s shoulder.  Then I backed up further than 100 feet for even more momentum.  On the third try, the van, with wheels spinning all the while, crept inch by inch to the top of the slight rise, on the left side of the road.  How fortunate, I thought in panic, that no vehicles came from the other direction.

          But now that I was moving, I would not stop for any reason!  When the road rose in small hillocks along the base of the river bluff, I increased my speed, and bounced from one side of the road to the other like a bumper car.  Then the road finally became gravel, and the white-knuckle drive of terror was over.

          At least I had learned the capabilities of my minivan.  The fact that I have not been stuck or stranded on unpaved roads since that day almost twenty years ago indicates to me that I learned my lesson well.  And I guess I have my well-wishing, smiling park ranger to thank for that.  In fact, I had no problems driving out of the Letcher Basin Reserve on my recent visit, but I did put the truck into four-wheel drive just as a precaution.  And I had a cell phone if that did not work.  I’m not sure what Lewis and Clark would have thought of that.

 

[For a link to another story from the same trip out West, called Days with Pelicans and Bison on the Prairie, click here.]

[To read chapter 26, called Ties, from the book Side Channels that relates another story from the same trip, click here.]  

Days with Pelicans and Bison on the Prairie

        Occasionally during quiet moments, my wife asks, what am I thinking?  And usually the answer is:  nothing.  She seems surprised by the fact that my mind appears to be blank; and, I guess, maybe I am too.  But there was one particular time when I wished she were there to ask about my thoughts, when I was at our cabin watching a soaring group of American white pelicans high above the Illinois River valley.  The sight of this species never fails to inspire a vivid recollection of a trip I once took nearly twenty years before across the prairies of North Dakota.

          Most folks probably associate pelicans with a place such as Florida rather than Illinois, let alone North Dakota.  But the plains of North Dakota are in the main part of the American white pelican’s breeding range.  Yet as strange as pelicans flying over the low, rolling hills of North Dakota seemed at the time, that memory is merely an entry point to another recollection of a much more quintessentially “western” experience.

          I was on my way home to Illinois from the Pacific Northwest, eager to cover the miles on the remote Great Plains where speed limits seem almost nonexistent.  But after Montana, even in the comfort of my Dodge minivan, I needed a rest; so I fixed my sights upon Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota.  Nearly a decade before I had briefly stopped there after a job interview in Colorado, on my way to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, when I first saw the pelicans in North Dakota, and I always planned to return for a real visit.  This was that time.

 

The Little Missouri River at Theodore Roosevelt National Park  

 

          My focus was the 29,920-acre federally designated wilderness area within the park, where a large herd of bison roamed free.  A trail system led through the wilderness area, a rugged grassland and savanna landscape alongside of the Little Missouri River and its system of bluffs.  This was very open country, impossible to get lost.  And so, I saw no reason to stay on the trails.  I wanted a better look at the bison herd, so I climbed to a nearby bluff top for a panoramic view of the flat plain below.  I found a natural seat on the ground, just below the bluff top, leaned back, and relaxed.

          Below me, the bison herd went about its peaceful business of grazing.  Individuals slowly moved along apparently at random as they ate; but even so, the herd as a whole seemed to move together in a definite direction.  I noticed they were gradually getting closer and closer to a large black-tailed prairie dog town.  The prairie dogs were getting quite agitated as the bison got closer, appearing at their holes briefly, then barking and going below, only to appear again after a very short time.  Sometimes they would run for their lives in panic from hole to hole, while the bison were oblivious, not showing any care where they placed their feet or wallowed in the dusty soil.  The low frequency, rolling grunts and bellows of the bison echoed against the hill sides like living thunder, and I shut my eyes and quickly fell asleep.

          When I awoke, I stood to stretch, and was shocked to alertness by a grazing bison just above me on the bluff top, no more than twenty feet away.  I slowly crouched and remained still, knowing that getting too close to such a large, powerful animal would be extremely dangerous, not to mention foolish; a slight turn of the head, and those sharp horns would show no mercy.  But after a few minutes, I looked around and the animal was gone.  How could it simply vanish into nothing in such an open landscape?   I planned to be very wary and careful on my hike back to the campground.   Meanwhile from where I stood, I could see below me that the bison herd had moved, and was now centered directly over the main hiking trail.  For safety’s sake I had to find another route.

          The bluff sides, though, were very steep, except where I initially climbed up several hours earlier, wherever that was.  For a while it seemed that each time I tried a route down the bluff, my path ended in a sheer drop.  Then just as I seriously began to think about retracing my original route (backtracking is always my last resort on a day hike), the bluff side’s angle showed itself to be a little less steep.  And so I carefully slid and partially crawled down the rather slick ground to the level prairies at the base of the bluff.  [Wet, Missouri River soil, called “gumbo,” can be more slippery than ice, as I discovered a few days earlier on this same trip during a rainstorm while driving a muddy road in Montana…but that is another story.]  And then it was an easy walk back to my campsite, with the bison herd left far behind.

          Those were adventurous times, indeed, still riding high on the indestructibility and optimism of youth.  Though I might be a bit more cautious these days, given the same opportunity, I like to think I would follow those same pathways again.  Seeing pelicans soaring over the Illinois River valley on a cool October day, and knowing they probably came from the high plains out West is a direct challenge.  Will I sit and watch or get up and do something?  What I do know is that when I see those birds, my mind is anything but blank.

Up in the Clouds: Reflections on Hawkwatching

          As I scanned the early August skies above Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, my mind was on migrating shorebirds.  The river level was still high, but falling; so it would be at least a few days before mudflats would form and provide suitable shorebird stopover habitat.  A few ring-billed gulls soared above nearby Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge holding my attention, just as a steadily flying double-crested cormorant came into view over the distant tree line.  At that instant, in my mind’s eye, I was abruptly transported back to the late 1980s.

          At that time, I had only recently discovered a popular activity known as “hawkwatching,” which involves placing oneself at a strategic location where migrating raptors tend to pass over, all the while scanning the skies over and over for hours, in order to count every raptor within sight.  A gathering of like-minded folks at such a location engaged in watching and counting hawks is what constitutes the phenomenon known as a “hawkwatch,” although it is certainly possible to watch hawks alone.

          My first hawkwatch experience was at the Blackwell Forest Preserve in DuPage County, Illinois, on top of an old landfill, called Mt. Hoy, that was converted to a park.  The landfill, covered with mowed grass with numerous vents that allow for escaping gases from the breakdown of garbage, is the highest elevation for miles around in the otherwise rather flat terrain of northeastern Illinois.  Fall migrating raptors from the north tend to be guided by the north-south oriented shoreline of Lake Michigan.  So Mt. Hoy, only about 30 miles west of the lake, is a good place to intercept the migration before the birds move further south and disperse into the vast Midwestern interior.

 

At the top of Mt. Hoy with gas vent.

 

          Sitting on top of Mt. Hoy, staring into the clouds for hours at a time, almost seemed like the act of flying itself.  Sometimes I would lose the sense of being on the ground and see nothing but sky.  After finding a high-flying raptor, I would keep the bird in sight as long as possible, watching it fly into and out of billowy clouds, soaring ever higher, until settling upon a purposeful glide, sometimes directly overhead, and then continuing southward out of sight.  If there were other hawkwatchers, they would continually be calling out sightings of different raptors:  “Red-tailed hawk!”  “Cooper’s hawk; I’ve got a Cooper’s hawk just over the tree line at 45 degrees.”  “Adult bald eagle!”  With many eyes and binoculars focused on the sky, it is doubtful that any raptor could pass overhead without being noticed.

          Some of the hawkwatchers are competitive; they wish to be the first to sight a bird and the first to proclaim a positive identification.  When the less experienced attempt to join in the competition, the result can sometimes be a humiliation, which is what happened years ago when I misidentified a double-crested cormorant for a migrating hawk.  “Raptor in the west,” I proudly announced.  “No, it’s a cormorant,” someone quickly and authoritatively corrected.  One soon learns to defer to the more experienced hawkwatchers; challenging an identification is not a smart move for a novice.  Sometimes the more experienced of the novices will engage in a debate, for example, discussing the finer points of differentiating between a red-tailed hawk and a red-shouldered hawk.  I recall one instance when the red-tail advocate was shouting at one individual he must have deemed his subordinate:  “Look at the belly band!  Look at the belly band!”  Red-tailed hawks have a dark, mottled pattern across their otherwise light-colored underside; seeing the belly band pretty much clinches the identification.

 

A hawkwatch at Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania.

 

          The social interactions and debates can be amusing, and listening is a great way to learn hawk identification.  But my preference is for a lonely, remote hillside near my home at Sand Ridge State Forest, along the Illinois River valley.  Few visit this site, except the occasional botanist looking for the unique plants that occur there.  The river presents somewhat of a leading line for hawks to follow, but it is not like Lake Michigan.  At Sand Ridge, I’ve never seen more than a trickle of raptors even on days when, according to my understanding, the birds should be moving.  At Mt. Hoy, much greater numbers of raptors over the course of a day are not uncommon.  Counts closer to the lakeshore, such as Illinois Beach State Park, are even better.

          It has been years since I have attended an official hawkwatch.  In my part of central Illinois, far from a large urban area with an energetic birding community, few seem excited by such an activity.  Even so, I’ll try to visit my favorite hillside perch at Sand Ridge Forest at least a few times during both spring and fall migrations.  This year, the first osprey of August along Quiver Lake has already signaled the beginning of the fall hawk migration.  And soon, when weather conditions are right, large numbers of broad-winged hawks will be soaring overhead.  Though I sometimes wonder what is happening at Mt. Hoy, for the time being I’m content with a good memory.  And I will never again mistake a cormorant for a hawk.

 

[To read more about hawks and hawkwatching, readers may download chapter 16, “When Hawks Fly” (Download Chapter 16 - When Hawks Fly) from my book Side Channels.]     

Waiting for the Mud

          A little over a week ago, the late July Illinois River level was holding steady at about 12.9 feet, which is more than several feet above its normal low level at this time of the year.  My hope was for falling river levels.  So I was not happy with the high water.  While a spring flood is a normal part of the river’s yearly pattern of highs and lows (hydrology), by late July into August and September, the expectation is for relatively steady, low levels, which would expose mud flats in the many floodplain lakes that flank and are connected to the river.  These flats attract migrating shorebirds, the objects of my attention at this time of year.

 

 

          A favored vantage point for observing shorebirds is on the upper end of Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, where my small, rustic cabin is located.  Typically, I’ll find a shady spot along the shore to set up a spotting scope, and then leisurely wait for the birds to show up.  But Quiver Lake is directly connected to the Illinois River; so when the river’s level changes, as it usually does, the same happens to Quiver Lake.  Even in August, I cannot always count on seeing mud flats.

          And yet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the river’s level is projected to gradually fall through at least the middle of August.  If this does, indeed, happen, then the lake bottom will eventually be exposed all around the lake’s periphery.  And if the river continues to fall, mud flats from more exposed lake bottom will expand in area and become an irresistible target for shorebirds.

 

*  *  *   

          Since my observations about a week earlier, the river has fallen over five feet.  Along the mainland shore of Quiver Lake, sandy seeps have become exposed, feeding pure groundwater to the lake and river.  Elsewhere, further out, there are narrow strips of mud along the shoreline.  The bulk of the lake, though, is still open water.  From a quick scan of the shoreline, I counted 50 great egrets in the shallows, about a third as many great blue herons, and a few killdeer, but no other shorebirds.  Yet I know that they are in the area, because at nearby Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, which is along the northern boundary of Quiver Lake, observers on July 27^th noted 20 shorebird species (from the Illinois Birders Exchanging Thoughts web site, posted on July 27, 2016 by Colin and Sharon Dobson).  Shorebirds were at the refuge because within the levee system (an earthen walled enclosure) refuge managers have kept water levels low so that mud flats are exposed and marsh vegetation can grow.

 

 

          For the time being, I will remain patient and hope that our regular summer drought period begins and river levels continue to fall and then somewhat stabilize.  An examination of NOAA‘s data from recent years, however, leaves some doubt that this will happen.  For example, last year the river topped out at 27.24 feet on July 1^st, breaking the 1943 record of 27.10 feet; and the previous year, it crested at 17.34 feet on July 5^th and crested again at 14.36 feet on September 13^th.  River levels are, of course, directly related to precipitation.  And according to the Illinois State Water Survey, this year’s July was the third wettest on record for Illinois (7.12 inches).  Another year that stands out in memory is 2008; I vividly recall the summer of that year, when July turned out to be the 10^th wettest on record (see chapter 19, “As the Rivers Rise Again” [ Download Chapter 19 - As the Rivers Rise Again] in my book Side Channels).  In recent years, only 2012 provided good shorebird habitat at the Quiver Lake bottoms; but that year also presented Illinois with severe drought conditions.

 

Quiver Lake, September 23, 2015 during medium water levels.

 

          It has always been give and take along the Illinois River.  Boaters prefer the river at higher levels, so obstructions are kept well under water.  For fishing, lower levels might be better, with fish more concentrated at habitat structures that still remain submersed.  Birders looking for shorebirds should prefer the lowest river levels throughout the late summer season, before marsh vegetation grows too high; but at that point, countless flowers will provide nectar sources for migrating monarch butterflies; and in the fall, seeds from maturing vegetation will attract thousands of migrating ducks.  At the same time, one summer flood can overwhelm all of the shorebird habitat and severely set back vegetation growth.

 

Quiver Lake, 28 July 2012 during low water.

 

          And though each year is unique, I look forward to witnessing these natural repeating patterns from year to year, which are still evident despite all of our modifications to the river and its floodplain.  And that is what I intend to do in my folding lawn chair, in the shade along Quiver Lake, while waiting for the mud.

Another Old Oak Done Gone

          After only a few years standing dead, the hackberry tree finally fell, blocking the driveway to our cabin on the Illinois River bluffs.  So I hired Big Jim’s Tree Service to remove the snag and, while he was at it, an old dead black oak that would surely be the next to fall over the driveway.  After Big Jim finished, I counted the tree rings on the stump and was astonished to find the 23-inch diameter tree around 200 years old.  This knowledge caused me to step back and pause.

 

Black oak stump at the cabin, November 11, 2015

 

          At that moment, I became overwhelmed by the amount of history and change that had taken place since the tree was a seedling; it was almost too much to contemplate.  But at once, I thought of the Lewis and Clark expedition up and back down the Missouri River from 1804 to 1806, the 1809 birth of Abraham Lincoln in Kentucky, the War of 1812, Illinois becoming a state in 1818, undisturbed sand prairie and savanna communities dominating the central Illinois landscape where I now reside, and our cabin built in 1950 as a summer weekend getaway.  And I thought about the advance of science and technology since that time.  Later I would sit typing at my computer—the world, through the Internet, at my fingertips—a cell phone on my hip, and recall watching a high-flying jet airplane streaking across the Illinois skies, barely visible thousands of feet overhead.  In 1815, most travel was still at the pace of a slow-moving beast of burden, the wind, or a gently flowing river.  At that time, the steamboat was cutting-edge technology.  And for the last 70 years, we’ve tapped into the power of the atom, the ultimate consequences of which may be to our peril.

          Of course, the list goes on.  And I am by far not the first to contemplate such things.  In fact, Aldo Leopold covered this ground very well in Sand County Almanac (1949) in a chapter called “Good Oak,” in which he describes his saw cutting through the growth rings of a dead oak, recounting history along with each cut.

          In recent years, I’ve noticed the death of quite a few old oaks, each at least 200 years old by my estimates.  Oaks, though, are really not long-lived trees, compared, for example, with California’s redwoods; a typical oak life span might be measured only in the hundreds of years at most, it seems, before disease, insect damage, heart rot, wind, drought, or fire take their tolls.  One suggestion I’ve heard is that recent drought years, such as occurred in 2012, were too severe for some of the oldest oaks.  Perhaps.  But these same old oaks, at the very least, survived the drought decade of the 1930s and the very severe drought of 1988.  The ultimate cause must be something else, or a combination of factors including drought.

 

This white oak (the "Gudgel Oak") near Athens, Illinois

began life in the 1750s.  The photo was taken in January

2014.  The tree has since died.

 

          It seems strange and unfortunate, though, to have more than a few old oaks dying within the space of a decade, as far as my recollections are accurate.  This is especially so because oak trees seem to be having a difficult time reproducing under current ecological conditions.  In the landscape where our oak got its start, fires regularly moved across the prairies and into the adjacent woodlands, keeping them open, letting in the abundant sunlight that is necessary for oak seedlings eventually to make it into the canopy.  Our oak, in fact, has a fire scar deep within its heartwood, a tell-tale sign of a different world.  Most of our modern Illinois forests, with fire long removed as an abiotic influence, have thick understories and closed canopies, where whatever acorns manage to germinate in the dim light never make it even to the sapling stage.  But while showing my wife the narrow growth rings on our old oak’s stump, we discovered a black oak seedling several feet away.  We will be closely keeping track of this small tree over the next several decades, and make sure that it survives.

 

A recently dead ancient oak at T. Stubblefield Grove

Nature Preserve in McLean County.  Sugar maples,

not oaks, will eventually fill in the canopy gap.

 

*  *  *

One day before too long, I plan to cut up at least part of our fallen oak, so that it can be used to heat our cabin.  We’ll then work its ashes into the soil of our vegetable garden.  And eventually all of its elements will be incorporated into something else and all of its stored energy from two centuries will dissipate, as entropy inevitably increases.  It’s the law, after all.

 

[Note  1.  A story from the State Journal Register about the recent death of a 400-year-old white oak tree at Carpenter Park Nature Preserve in Springfield, Illinois, can be found by clicking on this link.]

[Note 2.  Chapter 23 of my book Side Channels is called “Eulogy for an Oak.”  It is about a white oak tree along one of my favorite hiking trails in the Cook County Forest Preserves near Chicago.  To download a pdf file of chapter 23, click on Download Eulogy for an Oak-Chapter 23.]

For more information on Side Channels, please click on my Amazon Author page. 

Searching for Ospreys along the Illinois River

    On September 20, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web site predicted a rise in the Illinois River of about two feet over the next twenty-four hours.  So I knew all of the mudflats at Quiver Lake, which has a direct connection to the river, would soon be under water.  That was unfortunate because the shallow water and mudflats were just beginning to attract shorebirds.  I had yet to spend much time looking for shorebirds during this particular fall migration, and so I was disappointed.  But ospreys were also on the move.  Over the last few years, I have learned that Quiver Lake, just south of Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, is a good place to view ospreys migrating along the Illinois River valley.  My focus shifted to ospreys.

 

Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater 

 

    The next day, after a lazy breakfast, I moved a fold-up chair to the water's edge at Quiver Lake in the shade of a silver maple, and remained mostly hidden from view by a swamp privet shrub, black willow tree, and a pile of driftwood deposited in the last flood.  Tree swallows were very numerous, quickly flying back and forth at high altitudes as well as just over the water's surface.  But even more numerous, it seemed, were the American white pelicans, which engaged in all types of activities including soaring in large flocks so high they were at times almost beyond sight, even with binoculars.  There also were double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, great egrets, ring-billed gulls, Caspian terns, and turkey vultures.  The light blue sky behind high, wispy clouds with light south winds seemed a good backdrop for detecting migrating raptors. 

     For the next few hours, I alternated between reading and watching birds flying over Quiver Lake, the floodplain forests between the lake and the Illinois River, and the nearby refuge.  And yet, even after a couple of hours I saw no osprey, and I was beginning to become discouraged.  An additional factor, though, was that the majority of my attention was focused on reading a novel called Bootheel Man by Morley Swingle, and I was thinking more about southeastern Missouri and the pre-historic Mississippian Indians than the birds right in front of me.  But because I was not finding any osprey, even during September along a backwater lake with abundant fish, located on a major migration flyway, I wondered whether it was a good day for migration after all.

     Then just as I finished making some quick notes about the lack of ospreys, I looked up:  about 50 feet over the water, directly in front of me, an osprey flew past heading southward.  In less than a minute, it was out of sight; but those few moments made my day.

     And so, I went back to my book.  About a half hour later I finished another chapter and my thoughts once again re-emerged to the present time.  I put the book down, glanced around, and instantly made eye contact with an osprey that had been perching almost directly overhead on the top of a tall cottonwood tree.  The bird immediately left its perch, a bit awkwardly, I thought, and quickly flew in the direction of the far lakeshore.  Then it soon abruptly stopped in mid-air, held its wings back, and dived straight into the water, far enough away from me that there was a slight delay between the sight of the bird making contact with the water and the sound of the splash.  Immediately the osprey emerged from the water and continued flying southward out of sight.  I returned to my book, feeling a bit like the birder who was photographed looking for birds with a bird perching on his binoculars.

*  *  *

Additional reading on the Illinois River and birding can be found in my book Side Channels.  For information on the book, please link to my Amazon author page.

 

Bird Memories: Caspian Tern

        The other day I was sitting outside our cabin overlooking Quiver Lake, stretching out the last few minutes until I would have to head for the office and begin my workday, when a Caspian tern flew past.  For me, it was the first Caspian tern of the season.

        Sometimes seeing certain bird species can bring back a flood of memories about a particular place or circumstance.  So for a few moments, as the tern flew past, I was transported backward in time and distance, nineteen years to North Manito Island in northern Lake Michigan.  The National Park Service manages most of the 14,973-acre North Manito Island as a wilderness area.  I went there to backpack into the wilderness, away from the campground near the boat dock, away from civilization and everyone.

        The tern that I saw at Quiver Lake brought everything back.  I remembered arriving on the ferry, wasting no time before hiking away with my heavy frame backpack on one of the island’s few trails.  And then I left the trail and set up my base camp on the top of a remote forested dune, where I stayed for the next two days.  I spent the evenings at the base camp, reading by flashlight, and hiked to other parts of the island during the day.

        On one of those hikes, I went to the island’s northern boundary, and saw Caspian terns flying at eye level as I sat at the edge of a forested dune high above Lake Michigan’s cold waters, with blue skies and clear blue waters stretching to the horizon.  I sat there for a long time, as I recall, my feet over the side of the steep dune, watching the terns flying back and forth, sometimes dropping to the water for a fish.  The only sounds were the wind in the trees and the terns occasionally calling, so high above the water was I that the noise of crashing waves was swallowed up in the distance.

 

North Manitou Island and Lake Michigan, 1993

 

        A lot has happened since that day.  And it is remarkable how vividly and quickly the scenes appeared in my mind’s eye, just because a bird flew past when I happened to be watching. 

 [Note:  This essay originally appeared at the Pekin Daily Times online, August 11, 2012.]

 

Illinois River Flood Essays

Floating the Floodplain:  A June Gift 

For a couple of days it looked like Sunday’s weather (June 30, 2013) would be a gift.  And when Sunday arrived, the predictions, for a change, proved true:  cool and sunny, with a strong breeze from the north.  So I wasted little time before dragging my canoe to the water’s edge at Quiver Lake, a backwater of the Illinois River near Havana.  I needed at once to take advantage of this fine early morning.  Because as the day wore on, winds would increase, always a problem for a canoeist; temperatures would rise; and the river would become busy with recreational boaters.

Aerial photo of the Havana area, about 40 miles southwest of Peoria 

Another reason this day was a gift was because the river was still in flood, as it had been since April; the river, in fact, broke its 1943 high-water record on April 25.  And although it had gone down quite a bit, I suspected that I could still canoe through the flooded forests, which lay between Quiver Lake and the river, and then cross over the river to the Thompson Lake levee, which separates the floodplain beyond from the river.  As I paddled against the increasing north winds, I could just barely hear a towboat-barge chugging upriver, and I imagined its powerful diesel engines driving a massive propeller, leaving behind a turbid, foaming wake.  That’s where I was heading now, about a mile to the west.  But first I needed to cross Quiver Lake and, hopefully, its surrounding forest.

Boathouse at Quiver Lake at the height of the 2013 flood    

I quickly made it to the levee that forms the southern boundary of Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge at the head of Quiver Lake.  The water in the refuge was higher than Quiver Lake and just barely poured over the levee’s spillway.  Snowy egrets foraged on the spillway, occasionally grabbing small fish from the cascading flood waters.  Part of me wanted to stay and watch the egrets, and to see what other birds were at the refuge, but I felt like the morning was slipping away.  And so, I paddled onward, anxious and regretful at the same time.

As I entered the deep shade of the floodplain forest at Chautauqua Refuge’s southwest corner, I could see continuous water all the way to the Illinois River.  At 15.9 feet, the river was about a foot over the forest floor, allowing more than enough depth for my canoe.  As I negotiated around trees, floating logs, and other debris, the forest came alive with bird song.  Highlights included the prothonotary warbler, warbling vireo, Carolina wren, American redstart, red-headed woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, and the strange clucking-like “song” of the yellow-billed cuckoo.  Surrounded by every shade of green imaginable, I felt as if I were in some ancient southern swamp, where it still might be possible to see the rare ivory-billed woodpecker, as some have claimed in recent years.  I wanted to linger, but the wind in the forest canopy and a fast-moving John boat on the river reminded me to move along.

At the edge of the forest, I slowly floated out into the river, looked up- and downriver and saw no one.  Even in the river’s main channel, the current was slight, despite flood conditions.  But I paddled hard and fast, not wishing to be caught in the open water if a swift cruiser or bass boat should make its way around the river bend.  I was also concerned about the river’s famous “jumping” Asian carp, which can grow very large and heavy.  I’ve had these slimy, bleeding, highly energetic, flapping fish jump into my canoe before, and it was not a pleasant experience, for me or the fish.  So when I soon reached the Thompson Lake levee, I was a bit relieved.

Here I beached the canoe and climbed the levee, perhaps 10 to 15 feet above the river.  Before me an extensive cattail marsh, with small patches of open water, stretched for about 5 miles.  The recently restored Thompson Lake was beyond the marsh, and beyond that, about 2 miles away, the Fulton County bluffs.  This entire area, which was a highly productive farm up until the early 2000s, is now referred to as the Emiquon Nature Preserve.

I soon found a place to sit on the levee high above the marsh, unpacked my breakfast, and simply observed the scene before me.  I had dreamed about doing this very thing ever since my wife Julie and I purchased a cabin on Quiver Lake two years ago, but until this recent flood the river had not been high enough to make it through the forest in a canoe.  I thought again about how this day was a gift.

With my binoculars I saw several dead trees, which could not survive within the restored waters of Thompson Lake, with double-crested cormorants on each branch, and what looked like cormorant nests.  In the air I saw several American white pelicans attempting to find rising air columns for soaring.  Red-winged blackbirds were the most common bird in the marsh.  And while I listened to common yellowthroats and a calling least bittern, a black-crowned night heron emerged from the cattails, and flew out of sight to the southwest.  Before too long, the least bittern also emerged from the cattails for only a few seconds, flew past, and quickly disappeared again.  As far as I knew, it never appeared in the open again during my visit.  The phrase “being in the right place at the right time” came to mind.

By 10:30, I realized it would not be long before more boaters and personal watercraft would be on the river.  And as I tend to like a quiet river, I usually leave well before they are active.  So with a satisfied mind, I quickly re-crossed the Illinois River, glided through its floodplain forests, and entered Quiver Creek, just below Chautauqua Refuge’s water-control structure.  The snowy egrets were gone from the spillway and replaced by a pack of turkey vultures, standing ghoul-like with their red skinheads, watching me with nervous side glances.  The wind and current quickly carried me into Quiver Lake, and I rode the white-capped waves like a surfer, hardly paddling, all the way home to my sandy beach and cabin.  I would savor this gift of a day for a long time.

 

The Dynamic Illinois River

 [This essay originally appeared in the online Pekin Daily Times in May 2012, a year in which Illinois experienced a severe drought.]

One week ago the Illinois River was still high from a moderate flood event that inundated most of the lower-lying areas, including bottomland forests.  But the peak was short lived, and the river had gradually begun to fall.  Between last Wednesday and Friday, though, its level precipitously dropped four feet before somewhat stabilizing.

I know when the river level has changed because at my cabin along Quiver Lake, north of Havana, it is easy to see when the lake level has changed, even in small amounts.  Also, Quiver Lake is connected to the Illinois River, and whatever happens to the river, happens to Quiver Lake.

What I have seen, which is well known, is that the lake level and the river are usually in a constant state of flux.  Obviously, a large amount of rain upstream will eventually cause the river and Quiver Lake to rise.  But the river’s level will also change when the navigation dams at Peoria and below Beardstown have their gates opened or closed.  When the operators close the gates in Peoria, for example, due to falling river levels upstream, the river level below the dam drops; the water level drops in Quiver Lake sometime thereafter.  Just the opposite occurs when the gates are opened.  It’s all part of a plan to manage the river for boat traffic and towboat-barges, which need at least a nine-foot depth.

River users must adapt.  Fish adapt to these changes by moving into or out of backwaters connected to the river.  Birds also adapt:  when the river drops, waterbirds, such as ducks and double-crested cormorants, move elsewhere, because mud flats may have replaced their open-water habitats.  But shorebirds will be attracted to the mudflats…until the river rises again.

For the next few days, the Illinois River is projected to continue a gradual fall.  So mud flat habitats will continue to increase.  If that trend continues long enough, much of Quiver Lake will eventually become a mosaic of mudflats and small pools too shallow even for a canoe; Quiver Creek, which feeds into the upper end of Quiver Lake, will then become a more important source of water for the lake. 

Before that happens, though, it is much more likely that the river will experience one or more short-duration floods, like the last few weeks, before settling into its normal summer low period, the only time it is ever really close to being “stable.”  Exactly what will happen and when, no one can say.  One thing I do know for certain is that the Illinois River will eventually rise again.  At my cabin, I’ll be watching.

 

An Illinois River July Rise

 [This essay originally appeared in the online Pekin Daily Times in July 2012.]

Earlier in the week, I had read that northern Illinois experienced some very active thunderstorms and had actually received quite a bit of rain in some areas.  This, I knew, would eventually affect downstream rivers.  And so I was not surprised to see the National Weather Service’s forecast, which showed that the Illinois River in my part of central Illinois would rise about a foot between July 19 and 21.

Previous to this point in time, the Illinois River and its connected backwaters, such as Quiver Lake, had been at a stable, low level for weeks.  The lake at its upper end, near Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, in fact, held only a trickle of water delivered by Quiver Creek; and mud flats had been exposed long enough for lush vegetation to grow.

Quiver Lake in 2012 during a drought year

So not having been to my Quiver Lake cabin for a few days, I was anxious Saturday morning (July 21) to see the lake’s condition.  How much would the lake have risen along with the river?  And what else would I find?

As soon as I arrived at the cabin, looking out on the lake from the bluff top, it was immediately obvious that the lake had risen as expected.  But it was not deep enough to prevent great blue herons and great egrets from standing in the shallows, watching for small fish to catch in their spear-like bills.  So without delay, I readied my spotting scope and binoculars and headed down the bluff side to the lakeshore.

On the way I noticed a strange splashing sound coming from the lake, sounding very much like someone washing clothes (the sound reminded me of the old semi-manual washing machine that my grandmother once used in the early 1960s).  The sound seemingly came from everywhere in the lake at once.

When I emerged from the trees at the base of the bluffs, I could see that the splashing sound came from large fish spasmodically moving about all over the lake, even in the marsh vegetation over newly flooded bottomlands.  I had witnessed this phenomenon many times:  when the river rises, fish move into the backwaters from the river and sometimes engage in spawning if conditions are favorable.  All of the fish that I could see, though, were very large common carp, a species that is not native to North America and which tends to thrive in polluted waters where other species cannot live.  Most people consider the common carp undesirable.   

Though Quiver Lake appeared to be wall-to-wall carp, it is almost unreal to think that they were once apparently even more numerous.  In 1908, for example, 24 million pounds of fish were harvested from the Illinois River; and of the total catch, about two thirds were common carp (see Man’s Effect on the Fish and Wildlife of the Illinois River, published in 1966 as Illinois Natural History Survey Biological Notes No. 57, by H.B. Mills, W.C. Starrett, and F.C. Bellrose).

(It is interesting to note that the 24-million-pound statistic has often been cited in recent years to laud the great capacity that the river and its backwaters once had for producing fish biomass.  The carp component of that statistic, however, is usually overlooked.)

Still, Quiver Lake on Saturday, with its fresh, green marsh vegetation, blue skies, brown sandy beaches, and distant forested bluffs in Fulton County, was a scene of beauty.  It made me glad to live in central Illinois near the river.

[Note:  These essays also appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Illinois Audubon magazine, pages 16-18.]

 

More Illinois River stories can be found in my book Side Channels published in 2011.

Cottonwood Trees and Floods

[NOTE:  This essay was originally published in the Pekin Daiy Times online in May 2012.]

Early last Sunday morning, I went to my cabin along the Illinois River bluffs for an early breakfast and to enjoy the cool breezes on the screened-in front porch.  The screens usually need cleaning every so often from filtering the winds of whatever light debris is aloft.  But on this day, the screens were exceptionally filthy.  And I knew why:  downy seeds from the eastern cottonwood.

May is the month when cottonwood trees release their seeds, which are distributed across the land by winds.  The seeds have the best chance for germinating when they fall on bare ground.  And the seedlings grow best under full sun, with no competing vegetation.  Because most of the land is already occupied by vegetation of one type of another, the chances of finding suitable bare ground would seem to be low.  But here is where the Illinois River plays a role.  

The Illinois River’s yearly flood cycle is more or less predictable in a general way, and cottonwoods have adapted to that cycle.  On average, its waters, over several weeks, gradually rise toward a high water level, or flood, sometime in mid-spring, according to previous records.  When the waters recede, bare ground may be left behind.  And if events are timed just right, that will be the same time that cottonwood seeds are falling.  The floodwaters can also carry waterborne seeds to other areas along the river’s floodplain.

An eastern cottonwood, in fact, is supremely adapted to having its base covered in floodwaters for extended periods.  While an upland tree such as black oak would never survive on the Illinois River’s floodplain, a cottonwood is quite at home, and forms a valuable component of the forests.

Cottonwood is a very fast-growing tree, but short lived; a cottonwood 60 feet in height might only be fifteen years old; and a specimen older than 125 years would be very unusual.  At such an age, the heartwood may likely be rotted with numerous hollows, but useful for shelter and nesting by a variety of wildlife.  In addition, the great heights attained, perhaps 100 feet, are attractive as nest trees and perches for bald eagles.  Resting eagles are a common winter sight in the tall cottonwoods at my cabin.

So with just a little thought, I am reminded there is more to having cottonwoods on my property than cleaning the porch screens.

A Lesson in the Wind

[NOTE:  This essay was written and originally published in the online Pekin Daily Times blog, A View of Nature in May 2012.]

As I stood on Quiver Lake’s shoreline, I thought that if I hadn’t already taken the morning off from work, I might not have pursued a canoe trip on such a day.  I could see there were whitecaps on the water, and winds were already blowing about 15 miles per hour out of the northwest.  Since I had wanted to float southward toward the lake’s connection with the Illinois River, I had to make a choice:  either fight the wind and current on the return trip, with possibly higher winds, or fight them now by heading north instead of south, with an easy float back later in the day.  I headed north.

As soon as I pushed off the sandy bank, the wind immediately began to turn the canoe around, trying to blow it to the south.  And so, I used all of my strength to turn it around back into the wind. 

That accomplished, the delicate balance began:  keeping the head of the canoe pointed into the wind while also paddling and using the paddle as a rudder, as long as there was enough forward momentum. As soon as I could feel the wind begin taking the canoe in the wrong direction, I would counter with a push in the opposite direction.  The situation demanded complete attention.  Any lapse in judgment, and the wind would gain the advantage, turning the canoe around, and blowing it back south.

As long as the wind is consistent in strength and direction, with attention focused on some distance object for reference, it is relatively easy to paddle against even a 15 mile per hour blow.  But if the wind gusts or changes direction, the delicate balance can be quickly lost.

For much of the length of Quiver Lake, I managed a slow forward progress.  But then the wind unpredictably shifted as I adjusted the forward tip of the canoe slightly to the left.  And it pushed the canoe further to the left than I had planned, even as I tried as hard as I could to bring it back.  Then the canoe itself began to act as a sail, and I had to finally accept the inevitable:  the wind would win no matter what I did.

A lesson was there, I was sure:  something about going against the grain, or fighting the elements, or rolling with the flow.  Or what about the song that said the wind held some kind of an answer?  I would figure it out later.

I accepted my fate of being blown into a flooded black willow and silver maple woodland, where I would find shade and sanctuary.  Above me, the winds played havoc with the tree canopies, but it was calm in the understory.  And so I ate my breakfast and relaxed, glad to have taken the northward track.

 

Birding the Flooded Forest

[Author’s Note:  The Illinois River recently experienced a record flood event (27.78 feet).  Last year about this same time, the river was also in flood, but at a much lower level, when this essay was written and originally published in the online Pekin Daily Times blog, A View of Nature.]

Last week as I drove north of Peoria to a business meeting, all of the Illinois River’s tributaries were running fast, high, and muddy.  The Illinois River had risen only slightly in recent days, but from what I was seeing, with so much water flowing in, it would soon be in flood.

When I returned from my meeting the next day, I wasted no time heading off to my cabin on Quiver Lake, a backwater connected to the Illinois River.  Soon I was sliding my canoe into the water and was on my way.  The river was either at or just below the official flood stage of 14 feet, with many of the lower lying areas under water.  I headed into the wind and slight current toward Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.

Bird life in the flooded forests was active and loud.  Since it was early May, I was hearing resident species as well as migrants.  The latter group included the strange yellow-billed cuckoo, which returns to nest in Illinois from as far south as Argentina.  On the lake waters were a few mallards, wood ducks, and double-crested cormorants.

At the refuge’s old washed-out levee, I beached the canoe and walked toward the river.  But I could only get to about 100 feet of its normal banks because of the flooding.  Here I saw many species or heard their songs; but especially noteworthy were the American redstart, prothonotary warbler, blackpoll warbler, magnolia warbler, Tennessee warbler, and northern waterthrush.  A Swainson’s thrush brought my gaze closer to ground level, and it was then that I saw movements of a very large fish near the water’s surface.

It was a grass carp at least two feet in length, and it was feeding on submerged vegetation, reminding me of a cow grazing in a grassy field.  Grass carp are from Asia; they were brought to North America as a way to control vegetation from taking over farm ponds and other man-made bodies of water. 

But, of course, just like the jumping silver carp from Asia, grass carp eventually escaped into the natural environment.  I was concerned about the silver carp, though, because they are well known to jump into boats and slam without warming into boaters and canoeists.  That has happened to me before, but, fortunately, not on this canoe trip.

It was smooth sailing back to the cabin, with both the wind and current on my back, and no jumping carp.  And so, my afternoon of bird and carp watching came to a close. 

Wanderlust

             For most of my adult life, I have had a steady feeling of wanting to be somewhere other than where I happened to be at the time.  As strange as it sounds, being unsettled was a comfort, knowing that around the next corner would be something new and unknown, possibly even exciting.  I can trace such feelings to my earliest memories, walking with my parents along the forest preserve trails following the Des Plaines River near Chicago.  The river led to somewhere; I wanted to follow it; and I wanted to explore the forests on the other side.  But I was only a child, and so I followed my parents instead.

            As a young man, I traveled by motorcycle, planning my trips over the colder months, hitting the highway every summer.  Around Lake Michigan, to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Mississippi River I searched for remote areas, obscure pathways, and what I perceived as untrammeled wild areas.

            My destinations were varied, but they had one commonality:  natural surroundings, far from the sounds of traffic, steel and concrete, the bustle of cities, the smoke and debris of modern progress.  It would have been foolish, though, as some do, to denigrate the roads that brought me to my destinations, the vehicles that carried me, the society that could produce such products, or the farmlands that sustained that society.  These are all necessary and good.  But for just a short time, I longed to remove myself, if only temporarily.

            These days the wanderlust is well below the surface.  And I often wonder why.  Is it because I no longer live in a big city, but in a rural area with abundant forests, fields, rivers, and wetlands near my home?  Is it simply age?  The restlessness of youth has undoubtedly waned with age, and I have actually visited many of the sites that held a distant mystery when I was younger.  Perhaps my waning wanderlust has something to do with finally marrying in my late forties and becoming a homeowner with a few acres of land.  Most of the time, I can truly say that I am where I wish to be.

            And yet, waning does not mean dead.  I still make my plans as much as ever.  My search for natural surroundings, though, tends to be closer to home:  Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve, our cabin at Quiver Lake, and other nearby sites.  And yet, sometimes when I see a sharp-shinned hawk on its spring migration to the north woods, perhaps the northern shore of Lake Superior, I’ll want to follow.  It’s happened before.

 

[Note:  This post originally appeared in the Pekin Daily Times blog, "A View of Nature."]    

The Flood Aster

So far this year, the pattern of water levels and flow in the Illinois River—that is, the river’s hydrology—has resembled what might be expected for a typical Midwestern river like the Illinois.  This is the case insofar as the pattern, in a general way, consists of an extended spring flood followed by relatively stable, low water in the summer.

During the spring flood, fish have access to backwater areas for spawning, and plant seeds are distributed in the flood waters for later growth when the waters recede.  If the water stays low after the flood, lush wetland plant communities will develop on the low-lying floodplain, producing a nutritious seed crop in the fall for migrating waterfowl.  This is the pattern that has been established for thousands of years, a pattern to which the plants and animals that use the river’s floodplain have been especially adapted.

Quiver Lake wetlands, July 2012

One such species is a plant called the decurrent false aster.  It is a rare species; in fact, it can be found only along the Illinois River valley and a few nearby sites.  During years when the river follows its normal historical pattern, the decurrent false aster may do very well, and it may be easy to find this plant along the river’s edge and in dried out floodplain lakes and sloughs.

Decurrent false aster among other wetland plants 

The decurrent false aster produces flowers from August through September.  So yesterday (August 17), when I walked down the bluff to get a closer look at Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, and what may now be called the “Quiver Lake wetlands,” I was especially looking for decurrent false aster flowers.  Last year I was disappointed and did not find any, and so I was not hopeful.

When conditions are favorable, though, as they are this year, the decurrent false aster may grow up to 6 feet tall as single individuals or in large patches.  So I carefully scanned the thick growth of sedges, smartweeds, and cockleburs looking for an aster-like plant towering above the rest.  I even looked far out into the wetlands with my binoculars.  And none did I find.  So I started thinking that perhaps it was still a bit too early in the season.  But when I turned around to walk back to my cabin on the bluff top, there it was, right in front of me:  a single decurrent false aster in full flower!

 

Originally Posted at “A View of Nature,” blog, on the Pekin Daily Times online, August 19, 2012

In the Company of Bald Eagles…and a Papillon named Charlie

So far the winter of 2011-12 was unusually mild.  On January 5^th, in fact, the weather forecast called for light winds, sun, and a high of 55 degrees.  This would be, I reasoned, much too nice of a mid-winter day to remain indoors.  Harsh weather had yet to materialize this winter in central Illinois, and I knew the weather would eventually change for the worse.  So I gathered a few books and Charlie and headed for the cabin, located on the bluffs overlooking Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater just south of Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.

    It took only a few minutes to reach the cabin from home, and without any delay both Charlie and I were comfortably seated against a large cottonwood tree on the sandy beach, listening to the crying gulls over the lake, and trying to stay warm in the light breeze.  But Charlie kept wandering toward two large Labrador retrievers further down the beach, so I tied his leash to a stake near the cottonwood.

    After a few minutes, an immature bald eagle landed on the topmost branch of my cottonwood, about 75 feet directly above.  I stayed perfectly still, except for slowly moving my binoculars to my eyes.  The eagle constantly shifted its gaze in different directions toward the lake, but often looked directly at Charlie and me; its talons had a death grip on the tree branch, reminding me of needle-sharp meat hooks.  I could clearly see its eyes locked onto mine, and I wondered if the eagle thought Charlie, who is about the size of a cat, would make a nice meal.  I read that it is rare for a bald eagle to hunt for small domestic dogs or cats, but not totally unheard of.  Charlie whined about being tied to a stake.  It’s for your own good, I thought, not expecting him to understand.  Charlie fidgeted, but the eagle was not concerned about us.  Then after about ten minutes, after I had become engrossed in reading again, I heard the gentle beating of large wings, and the eagle was gone.

    Over the river bottoms and along the bluffs, there were eagles in every direction; whenever I looked up from my reading, I would see one or two soaring, flying past, or foraging for fish over the open lake waters.  Out in the Illinois River, about a mile to the west, past Quiver Lake and the forests at Quiver Lake bottoms, I could hear a towboat-barge traveling upstream.  There was a slight smell of dead fish coming from the lakeshore, a smell that reminded me of Lake Michigan in the 1960s, when alewives died in great numbers and washed up on Chicago’s beaches.  At Quiver Lake there were dead gizzard shad, smallmouth buffalo, freshwater drum, and Asian carp.  The dead fish and open waters were clearly reasons for the numerous scavenging gulls and eagles.   And then I heard a strange call overhead, and saw another immature bald eagle perching on the top of a cottonwood tree about 50 feet away. This eagle focused on the open lake, and rarely looked in my direction.  It left after only a few minutes.

Quiver Lake beach

    Then suddenly a large eagle’s shadow quickly moved across the ground, passing over us in an instant.  If I were Charlie’s size, I would have learned to freeze in place when a shadow passes overhead, especially because the eagles cruise the bluff line all day long, all winter, riding the updraft winds, looking for easy prey.  The lakeside forests also harbor great horned and barred owls.  But the domesticated Charlie was oblivious, as he focused on a pair of fox squirrels chasing each other up and down several nearby trees.  I kept Charlie close by, while he whined about being kept from running after the squirrels.

    By mid-afternoon, the winds were picking up speed, higher than expected, and I thought of two terms that I remembered hearing more often when I lived in Chicago:  wind chill factor and hypothermia.  And I realized that maybe I was underdressed, and it was time to leave.  As Charlie and I left the lake breezes behind, I listened one more time for a few moments, as eagle calls echoed from the river bottoms.  It was good to spend a winter day outside in the company of eagles, and Charlie too.

Charlie, safe at home