Gambell, Alaska

From the window of my wood-panel lined room I see a house, a rectangular one story box surrounded by snow. It is like all of the houses in Gambell. Only this one has two small windows when most of the houses have windows boarded over with plywood. There's a snowmobile marooned on a patch of snow. And a satellite dish attached to the porch of the house. The stream of ATVs outside my window never stops, giving this remote place a sense of busyness. And I wonder what people are busy doing.
I have a lot of time to look at this view and think about this place as I'm sick. I'm in Gambell, a place I have dreamed of for months now, and I'm sick.
Gambell is on St. Lawrence Island, in the Bering Sea, closer to Russia than it is to Alaska. This small town is a mecca for birders, as sea birds funnel up the coastline to this point of land that sticks out. So birders fly in, to get a view of birds they might never see, or ones they know but that will be in breeding plumage. And I wonder what the Native people make of us with our binoculars and scopes, chasing birds that they shoot and eat. Gambell remains a subsistence village--there is seal hanging to dry and the boys who sat next to Peter last night told him that Auklet is good to eat. But there are also empty boxes of macaroni littering the gravel (along with a lot of other garbage). And, as far as I can tell, almost everyone smokes. Tobacco grows nowhere in this rocky landscape.
Before leaving on this trip, one person from the group asked me: what bird do you most want to see? I did not have a target bird. More than anything, I wanted to see this remote landscape; I wanted to toe this edge of the world.
This morning I felt strong enough to head out with the group to the sea to watch the masses of birds flying by. We walked across the packed gravel toward the ocean under a gray sky. The temperature was in the low forties, wind mild. Right away, we saw Snow Bunting in breeding plumage--a stunning white bird we often see in New York State in our winter. We walked past remains of whales--large jaw bones stuck in the gravel--and a "bone yard" where hundreds of years of animal bones decay, or fossilize. The Eskimos dig out these petrified bones and carve them. Peter bought me a sea lion jaw, carved with a seal as a get-well gift. It sits here keeping me company.
At the water front, we watched flocks of birds moving about. Nearest to shore were the Least Auklets, which make a charming chirping sound. They fly like little bullets then land with a kerplash. Puffins, horned or tufted, often will lead a flock of Murres--mostly thick-billed--as they make their way north and south. Far out on a floating iceberg were some King Eider, barely recognizable at such a distance. Glaucus Gull and Kittiwakes soared by. We had surprise visits from a Yellow-billed Loon and a Fulmar. An Emperor Goose sped by. Our guides told us the Emperor is seen here less and less.
After an hour and a half of standing, watching and adoring those Least Auklets, I was sufficiently frozen. On my wandering way home, one of the many dogs that roam the town came over to greet me. "You friendly?" I asked. He leaned his head against my thigh while I rubbed his ears. Then he trotted off.

Orange-Crowned Warbler

Common Murres on the Water, Kittiwakes on Gull Rock

Orange Crowned Warbler--Photo by Peter Schoenberger

A week ago I had never seen or heard an Orange-crowned Warbler. They pass through the Hudson Valley where I live during their migration, but I have never had a chance to see and admire one. They are not a warbler that would command the most attention. They are yellow, a dusty yellow, with few other defining features. The orange crowned part is pretty subtle. And the song is a bit raggedy, not one of the magnificent warbler songs.
Turns out these little birds are everywhere in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. And after being thrilled at seeing them a week ago, I've now started to ignore them. That happened too fast.
Excess always makes us dull to something. Too much good food, too many beautiful sunsets, too many spectacular views of big, snow-covered mountains--even the best things push our attention elsewhere. But I'd like to resist that in praise of the orange crowned warbler and other birds we've seen a lot of here in Alaska (and the ridiculously beautiful views). Like the White-Crowned Sparrow, with its striking helmet and raspy song. Or the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of common Murres and Kittiwakes seen off of Homer while on a boat ride yesterday. A local birder took us out in his tin boat, circling Gull Island, where the Murres bobbed in the water, their beautiful black backs shining in the almost-sun (after days of rain). How could I ever tire of a Common Murre? He then took us into some little coves where we spied a few Marbled Murrelets, and some mountain goats high on a green hillside. The Murrelets and the goats--much less common, but no more special than the Orange-crowned warbler or Common Murres.

Wandering Tattler

View from Potter Marsh

Pine Grosbeak--photo by Peter Schoenberger

Before leaving for Alaska I set my sights on a few special birds: the Bristle-thighed Curlew and the Bluethroat in particular. But the bird I really wanted to see is called a Wandering Tattler. The Tattler is not a particularly beautiful bird or special looking bird. It is gray overall, with short yellow legs. It falls into the sandpiper family, that cluster of birds that are often maddening to identify. And it's not rare--certainly not as rare as the Curlew. And yet that bird took my imagination for one reason: its name. Wandering Tattler. Say it a few times and you'll feel giddy.
Our second day in Alaska we woke in Hope, just south of Anchorage, to rain and gray skies. We piled on layers--long johns, pants, rain pants; sweaters, down jackets, hats, gloves, rain parkas--and headed south toward Seward. The roads at five in the morning were empty. Five because we were still on East Coast time. Both Peter and Mark had gotten up at 3:30 to wander the woods near our rented cabin to look for owls (no luck). We pulled over at Summit Lake and there, squatting in the rain, was a Wandering Tattler. Now when I imagined seeing this bird the sky was blue, the views good, the feelings of euphoria deep. What I felt standing there in that pull out, the slow rumble of an RV parked nearby, was cold. Cold and a little tired.
Like many birding trips the best birds so far have been mammals: black bear, some with cubs, a moose at the end of a field near Potter Marsh, a porcupine that climbed into a tree and peered over at us, a full bodied coyote that we for a moment thought a wolf, and a mountain goat. The goat is perhaps the most miraculous of our sightings. As we sped along in our van at 65 miles an hour Mark (DeDea) asked Kyla (Haber) if she would stop. He pointed to a white spot on a steep hillside. Once he had a scope on it I could see the shaggy legs and bulky body of the goat. But that he was able to locate that goat was a gift to us all.
OK, the birds too have been wonderful, from the Hudsonian Godwit seen in a pond in Anchorage to the Pine Grosbeak we found by pulling over looking for another bird, to the Golden Crowned Sparrow seen on Palmer Road above Hope. We walked that dirt road lined with birch and spruce for four hours yesterday hoping to arrive in Ptarmigan country (no Ptarmigan, sadly, yet). En route Kyla found us a Spruce Grouse, a bird Peter has spent many hours trying to locate. There it sat in a tree, its dark red eyebrow visible as it remained motionless. The smell of the spruce forrest is always crisp, invigorating. We crossed snow, saw a bear galumphing on the hill above us (far up), and the sun beat down beautifully. On our return we saw a striking yellow bird I had never seen before: a Townsend's Warbler. It flew from tree to tree while we admired its black throat and mask against the brilliant yellow.
As we walked a beautiful, odd noise rose from the woods. It was a sound I had never heard before, which I have now come to associate with the forrest of Alaska: the Varied Thrush.
Thrush, especially the Veery, Wood Thrush and Hermit Thrush to me are the sounds of an Eastern woods. The sounds that they make--flute-like and a bit haunting--are beautiful, melancholic or romantic, depending on your mood. Here, the sound that this northern Thrush makes is also haunting, but in a different way. It sings a note, then another; last night one seemed to be singing a scale. But the notes are not pure, or flute like. "It's like amplifier feedback," Peter suggested. "It's like a bug," Kyla said. "It's like wind through metal," Mark offered. "But the song is indifferent." That was the quality I was trying to identify. Most birds sing to establish territory or to find a mate--there's boldness and sex lacing those calls. This bird seemed to be putting out a sound for other, more mysterious, reasons.
The Varied Thrush is a beautiful bird, with an orange throat and belly with a black bib. Imagine a finer American Robin with orange on the wings. This is what I love about travel: I never could have left on this trip imagining I would love the sound of a Varied Thrush, the striking yellow of a Townsend's Warbler, or the sight of a Mountain Goat high on a hillside. And I will still always love saying Wandering Tattler.

Goodbyes

This is the week of goodbyes. Over the course of the next three days I will be saying goodbye to the seniors graduating from Bard College. Tomorrow marks the first goodbye, with the baccalaureat ceremony, followed by the always-rowdy senior dinner. Friday night at the President's dinner we say farewell in a more sedate manner. What follows the dinner is my favorite part of graduation, the senior concert. The American Symphony Orchestra performs pieces composed by graduating seniors. The music is always inspiring. To hear a work of a young composer performed by such a talented orchestra is thrilling. And then Saturday, those students march across a stage and are gone. So fast. I've watched some grow up, intellectually, emotionally, physically. The young men change more than the women, it seems, growing taller and broader in four years.

I am always a bit heartbroken at the end of graduation. On that day, a shift happens. These graduates no longer need me--to read their work, encourage them through finals, figure out a paper topic. I applaud this, of course. But it leaves a hole. And then I will wait for the next shift, that moment when they write needing a letter of recommendation for graduate school. They write to tell me of jobs or marriages, of children born. They write to tell me they are writing.

To add to the leavings, I too am leaving, off to Alaska for a month. My own departure for such a stretch of time has its own sense of loss. Of course I'm thrilled to be off to this big place I have visited before. I have never been disappointed with my adventures in Alaska. But for a stretch of a month, I will be off the river. This has created in me a sense of quiet desperation. I've been out in my boat as much as I can, as if I can absorb the river into my body and take it with me. 

I've come to need the river, and the egotistical side of this is that I sense the river needs me as well. It doesn't, of course. Recently I received an email from Riverkeeper in which they describe their captain, who is also my good friend, John Lipscomb, as the eyes and ears of the river. He keeps a watch on the river, reporting back what he finds, taking action against polluters and illegal developers. But I really see him as the voice of the river, speaking for what the river needs. The river does need him. Perhaps the river does need all of us.

This morning, under a half-blue sky, I shoved north from the Tivoli launch, headed toward the Saugerties Lighthouse. I dipped into the bay south of the lighthouse, the same bay that will be clogged with water chestnut and spatterdock by the time I return from Alaska. I was about twenty feet away from shoreline when I spotted the eagle, perched low in a snag. It sat there as I bobbed in the water; it preened, and ignored me. Of all the birds on the river, this is the one that people are most excited to see. "See any eagles?" is the first question I get when people see my binoculars. What most people don't understand is that the eagle is an obvious bird; birders are looking for smaller, more elusive birds. And yet--seeing an eagle, especially so close, remains a remarkable thing.  I thought of all of the eagles I will see in Alaska. My memory is that they are everywhere, so common you stop paying attention to them. I'll hold onto this image of my Hudson River eagle, part of the success of restoring this river. Restored because people need this river but the river needs us as well to care for the shad and sturgeon, the eels and eagles.