Arctic Dreams

 “Sometimes there’s an owl, and sometimes there isn’t,” explains Pa in Jane Yolen’s beautiful book, Owl Moon. And what I want to add is: those “sometimes” are not of equal weight. It should read: very infrequently there is an owl, but every now and again when you are super lucky there is an owl. But that is too clunky and it’s important to keep hope, especially for children.

I am a person of hope, which means I spend a lot of time looking up pine trees for owls. I have been rewarded a few times, especially last January when I found a long-eared owl. But if I clocked the number of hours I look for owls, I would be embarrassed.

Come winter I start to hope for something really special, like a snowy owl, that gorgeous, large, white owl that brings news from the Arctic. My goal is to find one, but short of that, I was happy to go see one that had been posted to various bird sites for a few weeks now. It was hanging out near a reservoir on the New Jersey, Pennsylvania border. So on the day after Thanksgiving Peter and I decided to try and find this wintering bird.

MeadowlandsWe had spent Thanksgiving morning not helping with cooking the family feast, but rather birding in the Meadowlands. I’ve always been intrigued by the Meadowlands—a grassy, tidal area that I whiz past on the New Jersey Turnpike, usually rushing to Newark Airport. It doesn’t sound particularly appealing, with a capped dump nearby. But on a sunny, calm day, it was beautiful. In the distance we could see Manhattan, and in front of that the steady flow of traffic on the Turnpike. But what we focused on were a series of ducks: a black duck, a set of ruddy ducks with their erect little tails, buffleheads, with their dramatic black and white heads, and a duck with a black butt—a Gadwall. We then threw in our weight with the pumpkin pie (both making and eating).

Black Friday, while some had already spent a few hours shopping, we were speeding toward Pennsylvania, passing right by the Merrill Creek Reservoir near Phillipsburg, New Jersey. No one had posted a sighting of the owl in the past few days so we headed out with scope, cameras and only a little bit of hope. The parking lot had a line up of cars; all were intent on seeing the owl.

The reservoir is a beautiful, vast lake, a few ring-billed gulls loitering overhead. A pair of bald eagles perched in a tree. We walked down a wide dirt path then along a breakwater. A jumble of scree lined the breakwater that held the water back. And somewhere in that scree sat an owl. In other words we were looking for white on light grey.

We passed a trio of birders heading home.

“See the owl?”
“No owl,” they reported. And I felt my heart sink.

But they had seen a red-necked grebe. My heart lifted a little.

There is a bird in there!The other birders scanned the scree in search of the bird. So did we. The slope was vast, tundra-like, exactly what this bird knew best. And then I put my binoculars to my eyes and there was a rock that moved. That had black spots. That was shaped like an owl. That was an owl. My hands shook in excitement.

A snowy owl hunts at dawn and dusk. And for the rest of the day it rests, in the sun. And that is what it did while we watched, and photographers took thousands of photos of every yawn and fluff. And it watched us as well. And then we left it to sleep, to carry on its Arctic dreams.

Photo by Peter Schoenberger

Hunting

“The river is calm,” the man said, walking past me and my boat. I nodded in agreement. But he wasn’t a boater, just a man at the launch at 7 in the morning with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

The water grabs my ankles, seeps through my aqua socks. Too cold already.  I slip into my boat and settle in. A few strokes out I pause to take stock of a large freight boat shoving north. The water is calm, for now. Ten minutes later the bow of my boat slaps into the water.

The far shore is speckled with the early morning light, while the eastern shore remains cloaked in shade. I have on two jackets to keep warm. But the rotation of my shoulders and torso warms me quickly. I spy a few yellow-rumped warblers in the scraggly bushes that grow in the rocky shoreline.

The north Tivoli Bay lures me in. As I glide under the train overpass, the stillness of the bay immediately wraps me like a comfortable blanket. I stop paddling and coast.  In front of me is a dock that cut loose during Hurricane Irene. It washed into the Bay a few weeks ago and stands there, an odd adornment in a wide bay.

I move forward, wondering what treasures I will find this morning in the north bay when gunshots erupt from the reeds. My shoulders hunch. Duck season. I should have known that the same place I wanted to be would be where a hunter wanted to be. Part of me believes we can both be in this bay, part of me doesn’t want to get hit by a stray bullet.

Just as I decide I should backtrack onto the river I hear the call of a great horned owl.  Hoot hoot hoot hoot. It’s like a magnet to my heart and I forge into the bay. I follow close to the reeds, spying white throated sparrows, and  a chipping sparrow or two. Swamp sparrows peak out at me when I pish.  

Though I’ve decided to go into the bay, I’m not at ease. I try and calm my thoughts, which ping with ideas. The shots I heard were to the south. Hunters shoot at close range, and I’m visible in my pepto-bismol pink boat, wearing a blue jacket.

Truth is, I have respect for many hunters. They know these woods, the bays and the secret spots where ducks hide better than I do. They know ducks better than I do (this actually isn’t saying much! Ducks are low on the list of birds I am capable of identifying). But I wish they didn’t need to bring them out of the sky. As my friend Sonia said, “I just don’t like guns.” It’s that simple.

I spy a marsh wren, tail erect, in the cattails. A white throated sparrow practices its song. And then there’s the owl again. As I round a bend, my heart races, but not for the bird; I’m wondering if a hunter is around the corner. It’s happened before. But I often don’t see the hunters in their camouflage until I’m right next to them.

Today, though, there’s no hunter. And I start to wonder about insisting on paddling on, on insisting on sharing this marsh area when the sounds of guns in the distance leaves me on edge. The point of the paddle is to take in the morning light, the morning peace.

The owl hoots one more time, then I turn and take sure strokes back to the wide river.

Into the Woods, Estampes

Before I head left, uphill and into the woods I stop at the small graveyard. It’s walled in, with a metal gate. There’s a watering can that I fill from the spigot, to water the diplandenia, which my sister bought when she visited in April. The flowers are still in vibrant pink bloom in front of the blocky grey tomb that is the last one on the northern side of the cemetery. In addition to the flowers, there are two hideous ceramic flowers—somewhat required decorations—that rest on top of the flat, wide tomb. Most of the granite tombs are stacked with tokens of love like these ugly flowers, from friends, and relatives showing their grief through these objects. Mixed in with those brimming with love, are those graves that are seemingly abandoned, weeds sprouting nearby, or vines crawling over the tomb. Every year I vow to come and tend to those that are starting to crumble, as if the entire village might be my family.

I sit in front of our family tomb and read the names of those inside: Montegut, Ragner, Rogers. Montegut is my great grandfather. Ragner is my grandmother (though not my grandfather, who was buried near Pittsburgh) who grew up in Estampes, then married a Swede born in the States. Rogers is my mother and father, whom we buried in 2005, then 2007. I remember when we added the granite plaque with the name Rogers, the shock of seeing my own name, of realizing this is a place I will rest as well.

I leave the cemetery, surprised I am not crying. It’s hard to take stock of when intense grief subsides, but somehow, miraculously it has. Time helps, is what friends told me, though I never believed them. It feels miraculous to be on this side of sadness.   

And yet time has not taken the edge off of Odette’s grief when she tells me, as she does every summer, about when her father died. She was fourteen. It was 1943. Her father fell down the stairs, was rushed to the hospital. It was a ruptured intestine, is what she guesses now. Peritonitis. They operated in Tarbes, then brought him home. Five days later he was dead. Like that. Every time she tells the story she folds into tears.

I turn uphill and pass Elises’ broad, beige house. Its windows are shuttered, the courtyard quiet. Five years ago she left her animals, two cows, some rabbits and a flock of ducks to live with her son an hour away. Visiting Elise was a summer ritual, one our mother forced us into as kids. There was the fun of the animals—Elise always had baby rabbits, or baby chicks and she loved her animals in a way the other farmers did not. She is the one who hand milked a cow with a deformed tongue who was unable to suckle from its mother. And she always had fruit trees—there was the year we spent hours up in the cherry tree gorging on the ripe fruit. But at Elises’ there was always some animal part—and I mean the liver or heart—draped over a pan in the open fire in her kitchen. Flies swirled through the window. The smell was often a bit hard to overcome. I once took a friend from Manhattan to visit Elise and she said—cruelly, I thought—that if you took Elise and plopped her down on 50^th and Broadway she would be a bag lady. She had the same weathered look of New York’s homeless. The same lumpy legs held together with gray stockings, and a tattered dress. But what I saw when looking at Elise was hard work and heart break. Her husband was crushed by a tractor three months after their son Andre was born (this in the mid 60s). So Elise raised her son, and took care of her mother Pauline. She is tough and proud, and refused help to build a bathroom inside her house; she always had an outhouse and never had hot running water. Through the winter, the heat from the kitchen fireplace warmed her.

I walked past Elise’s, then past the Arnou’s, whom I still think of as the Parisians though they moved to Estampes in the early 70s. Then I was above the village, looking down on a sweep of fields. In front of me were woods, dense with oak and locust trees. I was, of course, looking for birds. A nuthatch. A brown creeper. I spied a flash of blue and thought the large bird might be a jay. But it was pretty quiet in the woods, and the birds felt skittish compared to the birds at home.

I saw a few cars parked by the side of the dirt road. These were the cars of people hunting mushrooms, cepes, the large boletes, and girolles. In my early twenties I lived in the house in Estampes for a long stretch of months. I spent hours in the woods looking for cepes, the brown-capped, meaty mushroom prized by gourmands. Those days, anyone could roam the woods but because people from out of town come to poach, you now need a permit. (I wrote about mushroom hunting in an essay published in a lovely anthology titled France: A Love Story.)

A car approached and the driver came to a halt, turned off the engine and hopped out to shake hands with me. He was older, wearing blue work pants held snug with a belt, and a checked shirt. He was a slender man, his forearms strong and tanned. I did not recognize him, which surprised me.

How is your hunt? he asked.

I explained I was hunting for birds, not mushrooms. And I realized as I said this that a walk without a hunt—birds, mushrooms, flowers—isn’t as fun as one where I am looking for something. The hunt provides direction, small destinations.

What sort of birds, he wanted to know.

Anything, I said, I was from the States, so anything would please me. This was completely true.

Oh, the Americans, he said. You’ve been doing work on your house.

Right.

He told me about the buzzard up the hill. Some farmers don’t like the buzzard, but it’s a good bird, he said.

How was your hunt? I asked.

He said that two weeks ago there was a lot of rain, perfect for mushrooms. They were sure to have a good crop. But then it rained again. And everything went a bit soft. The slugs were having a good time of it, he said. We laughed. Then off he drove and I continued uphill. The woods were calm, the light speckling through the trees. From time to time there was an opening, a small field where farmers grazed their cows. It was humid for the southwest of France, and I could feel the weight of the sun as it rose higher in the sky.

Two men walked toward me.  They were both about my age, and carried wicker baskets. The one man looked familiar.

“You are a Ricourt,” I said. It was a good guess as it seems that half of the village are Ricourts, the wealthy baker family.

Oh, he said, and took off his hat, leaning in to kiss me. I could feel the sweat from his cheek cool against my own as we greeted each other.

The hunting was ok, but not great. Yesterday was better. Tomorrow it would be over. It made me think of how these farmers approach life, with a directness about the loss, the births and deaths. This is the way it was. Nothing to lament, just an observation. And we said goodbye.

Indian Point

 One spring, I loaded up my kayak with sleeping bag and food and pointed south on the Hudson River. I was traveling with a former student, Emmet, and we intended to take a few days, camping on islands and on the banks of the river, to make our way from my village of Tivoli to Manhattan (I write about this adventure in my upcoming book, MY REACH). This is the freedom of a river, to head out and see what you can see. And I did see many marvelous things on my journey, and lots that I wish I had not seen. Day four I passed the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Instinctively, we scooted to the western shore, giving the plant a wide berth.

From water level, the towers loomed above me and the entire structure felt imposing. There are layers of red brick buildings smack against the river. Not a window in sight, as if whatever was contained inside shouldn’t be seen, and should not see out. I’d passed some large industry on the river—Trapp Rock up by Poughkeepsie, for instance, but nothing that felt ominous like the Indian Point plant. There are many reasons to protest nuclear power. In my life, the stories of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are enough to convince anyone this is a risky source of energy. There are many reasons not to want a nuclear power plant so close to a major metropolitan area—9/11 is enough to show how vulnerable we can be. And there are many reasons not to want a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River. The plant rests on a small earthquake fault. And, the plant uses billions of gallons of water t o cool its towers and then spits this warmed water back into the river, altering the ecosystem. In the process, millions of fish are sucked into the plant and killed. But I had not thought about any of this with much care until I stroked past the plant low in my boat.

Floating in a kayak on a big river I often feel tiny, especially next to tankers or the barges that shove north and south at all times of day and night (in this photo, a tanker is emerging around Magdalen Island--that little dot is me). But my river view is an important perspective, it’s the same view a beaver might have, or a great blue heron wading by the shoreline. In a kayak, there is an intimacy with the water, whether that water is clean or not, the sights beautiful or not. And I did not like being intimate with a nuclear power plant. It took experiencing the chill of Indian Point on a cool rainy spring day to make me care about shutting down the plant.

And so it comes as good news that Governor Cuomo wants to shut down Indian Point and that new legislation will make this possible. This long battle may finally come to an end. According to Times reporters, Entergy, the company that runs the plant, came away from the meetings “alarmed” with the governor’s direct and strong intentions.

Even though I am skeptical that Indian Point will be shut down, I’m going to be naïve and pretend this is true. I have decided to begin my celebration by wondering what happens to a closed nuclear power plant. Will it join the history of closed industry along the river? When I paddle the length of the estuary, I have passed brick towers that are the remains of the icehouses (photo at left) that stored and brought ice to keep Manhattan cool. There are the sheds that were used in brick making just north of Kingston where teenagers now come to skateboard, the clatter of their leaps and landings echoing through the tall, metal-roofed buildings. There are the remains of the cement industry, and an enormous brick building near the water in Germantown that says “Cold Storage.” These ghosts of industry past I find intriguing, often beautiful. I slip onto shore and out of my boat and poke around these structures, wary of broken glass and often taking a brick as a souvenir. Manhattan is built from Hudson Valley cement and brick. In an odd nostalgia, I wish that this industry were still alive, but cement is reduced to three plants near Smith’s Landing, and the brick industry closed for good in 2001.  Yet the end of these industries means a cleaner river, a quieter, calmer river for me to paddle on. One hundred years ago, would I have wanted to see the brick industry close?  

So in a hundred years will someone paddle past the crumbling towers of Indian Point and wonder about nuclear power? Perhaps there will be a certain nostalgia as she wishes that we still had that plant generating electricity for New York City. Or will she wonder what we ever imagined was good or sane about nuclear energy?