Whoop!
In January of 2007, my father and I drove west from Pennsylvania to Arizona together, stopping in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas. He ate oysters, while I took walks, and together we marveled over our vast country by reading aloud billboards, commenting on the mesquite, the ugliness of strip malls, the trash by the side of the road. The one place he wanted to stop was Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the upper Texas Coast. Why? To see Whooping Cranes on the bird’s wintering grounds. My father was a novelist, a bookish man, not a naturalist. But the Cranes captured his imagination and he wanted to see them. Aransas, established in 1937 to protect migrating birds and especially the Whooping Crane, is a reliable place to see the birds in winter.
In January of 2007, my father and I drove west from Pennsylvania to Arizona together, stopping in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas. He ate oysters, while I took walks, and together we marveled over our vast country by reading aloud billboards, commenting on the mesquite, the ugliness of strip malls, the trash by the side of the road. The one place he wanted to stop was Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the upper Texas Coast. Why? To see Whooping Cranes on the bird’s wintering grounds. My father was a novelist, a bookish man, not a naturalist. But the Cranes captured his imagination and he wanted to see them. Aransas, established in 1937 to protect migrating birds and especially the Whooping Crane, is a reliable place to see the birds in winter.
So we stopped in Aransas. And we walked one trail, giddy over the alligators that lazed so close to the trail and marveled over the Roseate Spoonbills. We drove a beautiful 15 mile loop through grasslands and there I saw something take off, something large and white, like a sheet moving through the air. I knew little about birds at the time so I called it a Whooper, but I knew I was lying. Could easily have been a Pelican or a Great Egret. I needed to go back to see those elegant white birds.
This trip of 2015 started in San Antonia in rain, in gray, and well, it pretty much stayed that way through the week. Texas was supposed to be warmer than New York in January and it was—but just barely. My friend Teri and I started by driving the loop at Anahuac, which was like a bird safari, the Coots on every bit of open water, but also Reddish Egrets, White Ibis, and every species of duck that I know. A few days later we were further along the coast. We had passed some of the prettiest and some of the ugliest landscapes we had ever seen. Don’t mess with Texas? The beaches were loaded with garbage. And the views from our rental car roller-coasted from protected refuges to blazing, otherworldly oil refineries.
Just before Aransas we decided to drive south along a sand-dirt road near Collegeville. The land there was extraordinary, salt marshes with grasses in shades of red, orange and yellow. We were alone on that isolated road, seeing Crested Caracara, those dignified looking raptors with flat heads and orange face masks perched on fence posts, and Long-billed Curlews shy in the grasses. And then I heard them: Sandhill Cranes. It’s a call you never forget. I pulled over and we looked at the gray long-legged birds through the scope as they moved in a flock through the grasses.
We continued down the road, both of us pointing left, then right at one bird after the next, a bit dizzy from it all. “Egret,” Teri said pointing left. They were the standard long-necked white bird of the trip. “Wait,” I said, noting the birds were bigger, holding themselves not Egret-like. I stopped, pulled out the scope, saw the dark heads of the Whooper and started to tear up.
The Whooping Crane is one of the rarest birds in the United States. In the 1940s populations dropped to 15. From that tenuous number we have climbed to around 600, some in captivity. The return of the Whooper is one of the celebrated acts of conservation: if we put our money, time, and imagination to the task we can do this. The most imaginative part of this is raising chicks using Crane puppets and then teaching the birds to migrate using an ultra light craft.
If only we gave all bird species that are endangered this kind of attention, this much love (and money and dedicated researchers). But rather than lamenting that, I stood there on that lonely dirt road grateful we have done this one extraordinary act of protection. The big white birds in the distance grazed about, unaware of my awed excitement. Because they were such a surprise sighting, they felt like my birds. And this, I realize is one of the great joys of birding: finding the unexpected. Or rather in this case, finding the expected in an unexpected place. That it was such a special bird added to the thrill. This all combined to give me a keen sense of discovery, such a rare experience in a world so fully discovered.
Dead Bird
The river was windy last night. Both current and wind were against me as I shoved south in my kayak on the Hudson River. To the side, I saw a lump in the water. I assumed it was a fish, and was hesitant to pull near—marinating fish is not a smell I enjoy. But the shape was not entirely fish-like, so curiosity won out. What I found floating in the water was a gull, its bill hooked through the slit-like nares, by a fishing lure, and the web of its feet hooked by the other end of the lure. It was clear what had happened: the bird had come down to the shiny object expecting a fish meal, was caught through its bill and, in trying to liberate itself with is feet, entangled itself further. The lure hooked the bird to itself, bill and feet joined to shape the bird into a circle. It then plunged into the water and drowned. Not too long ago. The body was soft in my hands, and the feathers intact.
The river was windy last night. Both current and wind were against me as I shoved south in my kayak on the Hudson River. To the side, I saw a lump in the water. I assumed it was a fish, and was hesitant to pull near—marinating fish is not a smell I enjoy. But the shape was not entirely fish-like, so curiosity won out. What I found floating in the water was a gull, its bill hooked through the slit-like nares, by a fishing lure, and the web of its feet hooked by the other end of the lure. It was clear what had happened: the bird had come down to the shiny object expecting a fish meal, was caught through its bill and, in trying to liberate itself with is feet, entangled itself further. The lure hooked the bird to itself, bill and feet joined to shape the bird into a circle. It then plunged into the water and drowned. Not too long ago. The body was soft in my hands, and the feathers intact.
As I held the bird, I said out loud: I hate people. I don’t actually. But I hate the carelessness of people, how someone had let this lure go. I transported the bird to a place where I could liberate it from the lure, then I unceremoniously dumped it in the water—a meal for a snapping turtle, perhaps. I watched the limp bird float off and let the mixture of sadness and outrage play through me.
This hook was just one of the ways that we make life for birds an obstacle course. Four of the top killers are these:
Glass. The Toronto-based organization FLAP—Fatal Light Awareness Program—estimates that every year 100 million to 1 billion birds are killed colliding with windows.
Wind turbines. Wind farms kill about 572,000 birds a year.
Cats. A 2013 study estimates that cats, both domestic and feral, kill 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds a year.
Planes. “Avian ingestion” or BASH—Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard—forces one plane a day to land; the cost to the industry is in the millions. But the cost to the birds? It’s hard not to fall into a feathered hopelessness.
When a bird is killed by a window strike, a feral cat, a wind turbine or an airplane it is absurd. Their natural lives—finding a meal, and staying safe from natural predators—are challenging enough. And perhaps the greatest challenge for a bird is migration. Many end up with tattered wings, and bodies that weigh half as much as when the bird started out.
The ludicrousness of a bird dying by colliding with a window, or electrocuted on a wire, or snagged on a fishing lure is hard to describe. But since I have been reading pages of Arctic and Antarctic literature this summer, this is the analogy I can make. Let’s take the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen who was the first man to sledge his way to the South Pole, most likely the first to fly over the North Pole (in a dirigible), the first through the Northwest Passage, and the second through the Northeast Passage. He is the Arctic Tern of polar explorers. Now, imagine that he has just returned from the South Pole and he stops at the local grocery store to buy some food—perhaps the lettuce he missed after three years of polar mush. And as he walks back to his car, he is crushed and killed by a car backing out of the parking lot. It is that absurd for this bird to have been killed by a fishing line.
August 24, 2014 in Birds, Environmental Issues, Hudson River, Kayaking
Kayaking the Arctic
On my last day in Longyearbyen, in the Arctic, I wanted to kayak. In a kayak you sit close to the water, and I hoped to feel more inside of this landscape that we had been floating through on a sailboat for the past two weeks. But also, at home in the Hudson Valley I kayak every day, so to be in a little boat on the water for me is to feel home.
In 1896 Nansen with his traveling companion Johansen end their three year expedition in the Arctic crossing open water in kayaks made of skins stretched over a wooden frame. The kayaks were boxy and stable and could carry a large load. At one point, walrus surround their boats, and a walrus “shot up beside [Nansen], threw itself onto the edge of the kayak, took hold farther over the deck with one fore-flipper and, as it tried to upset [him], aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks.” At another point, a walrus punches a hole through his boat.
On my last day in Longyearbyen, in the Arctic, I wanted to kayak. In a kayak you sit close to the water, and I hoped to feel more inside of this landscape that we had been floating through on a sailboat for the past two weeks. But also, at home in the Hudson Valley I kayak every day, so to be in a little boat on the water for me is to feel home.
In 1896 Nansen with his traveling companion Johansen end their three year expedition in the Arctic crossing open water in kayaks made of skins stretched over a wooden frame. The kayaks were boxy and stable and could carry a large load. At one point, walrus surround their boats, and a walrus “shot up beside [Nansen], threw itself onto the edge of the kayak, took hold farther over the deck with one fore-flipper and, as it tried to upset [him], aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks.” At another point, a walrus punches a hole through his boat.
Imagine this walrus climbing onto your kayak...I think about paddling in my kayak and a walrus flopping onto the deck. I’d roll over in an instant. On our second day on board Antigua, someone thudded down the hallway and knocked on doors. “Walrus,” the call went out. Jolted from sleep, we emerged on deck to see a mother walrus with a baby lounging on a cake of ice. They both peered at the boat as we floated past. The baby lifted its head in curiosity and the mother took her large flipper and pushed it down. We were close enough to these big slug-like creatures to get a sense of the heft—and it made me dizzy to imagine such an animal sharing my kayak with me.
A few days later we saw a pile of walrus on land. They lay on their backs, tusks pointed toward the sky. They lolled on each other, and on the sand, fanning themselves with their flappers. Two remained in the water, playfully rising up in battle. The tusks are formidable, long, wide, hard. How fast it could gouge a boat!
Cold water ready with Donald FortescueThe worst kayaking moment for Nansen, however, is when the kayaks—with all of their gear—float off. Without that gear they are dead men. Swimming to retrieve the boats, he could also have died. But the later option is the one he had to chose. Nansen vaults into the water and catches up to the boats.
I’ve had a boat float off without me, but swimming out into the Hudson is not swimming the Arctic. I had made three quick plunges into the icy water while I was in the North—three strokes was about all I could manage. I emerged breathing quickly, stunned by the cold. My body soon started to tingle, to vibrate with an ice cube vigor. It takes Nansen hours to warm himself.
It is for gripping scenes like this that I read these polar narratives, thrilling at the adventures. In some ways, I have spent my life trying to recreate that sense of adventure that comes with the unknown. And so certainly that was in my mind when I rented a kayak through Svalbard Wilderness Adventures and with fellow Arctic Circler Donald Fortescue headed out at 9 in the morning in dry suits, and full of instructions on the cold. We had one young Swedish guide and three other kayaks, all doubles (Donald and I were in singles). We shoved our boats into the Inisfjorden where Longyearbyen sits. The water was black-green and wind-ruffled. We flew across the Fjord and slid onto shore on the far side within forty five minutes. There a few cabins rested. Some of these rustic cabins were built (and refurbished) when coal was mined from the mountain above. Now these are summer cabins. “Norwegians like their summer cabins,” the young guide explained. And I thought: who doesn’t?
We built a fire and, wrapped in snowmobile suits, sat around shivering and eating a lunch of cheese and sausages. The Swedish boys regaled us with tales of driving the bad roads of Norway along the coast to Tromso in their Previa van. They would be road tripping back to Stockholm, looking for adventure that would probably come when their unreliable car broke down.
We walked the shoreline, enjoying a Purple Sandpiper along the beach line and the ever-present Arctic Terns. We looked at the remains of an airplane, wrecked on this lonesome shore.
The return felt like paddling across a wind-tossed Hudson River in early April, the water still snapping cold. We had no encounters with walrus or other creatures. We had no mishaps with the boats. It was an oddly tame paddle; this is what the guides guarantee. But something in me expected an adventure in this half tamed, cold land. But what I realized as my boat slid on to shore, my shoulders and arms pleasantly sore, that my outings alone, close to home, in the tame and populated Hudson Valley, are often full of more unexpected moments, mis-haps, those moments I’d call adventure.
Pyramiden
The Antigua docked at Pyramiden in the evening and Sascha, the guide to Pyramiden came on board. He was slender, mid-thirties, with shoulder length black hair that needed a wash. He gave a brief history of the town, without cracking a smile.
Pyramiden is a Russian ghost town of the north. It was founded by the Swedes to mine coal from the pyramidal shaped mountain in 1910. In 1927 they sold it to the Soviet Union. The town, on the Billefjorden, was officially closed in 1998 but about 20 people continue to live there, running a small tourist business.
When Sascha was done talking, someone offered him a drink.
“I don’t drink,” he said in a strong Russian accent. “I smoke weeeeeed.” We all laughed. Sascha continued with his deadpan look, eyes wide.
The Antigua docked at Pyramiden in the evening and Sascha, the guide to Pyramiden came on board. He was slender, mid-thirties, with shoulder length black hair that needed a wash. He gave a brief history of the town, without cracking a smile.
Pyramiden is a Russian ghost town of the north. It was founded by the Swedes to mine coal from the pyramidal shaped mountain in 1910. In 1927 they sold it to the Soviet Union. The town, on the Billefjorden, was officially closed in 1998 but about 20 people continue to live there, running a small tourist business.
When Sascha was done talking, someone offered him a drink.
“I don’t drink,” he said in a strong Russian accent. “I smoke weeeeeed.” We all laughed. Sascha continued with his deadpan look, eyes wide.
Our guide to PyramidenThe night before, Antigua had docked in Berentsberg, a still active Russian coal mining town (owned by the Russian mining company Arktikugol, which also owns Pyramiden). The school in Berentsberg is solid yellow brick, painted with images of whales and bears and a great gray owl in blues and reds and purple. But despite the cheerfulness of these drawings, the place was decidedly depressing, with buildings falling down and workers, who sign on for two year stints, passing without a glance or a smile. So I wasn’t prepared for how alive Pyramiden would feel.
The next day Sascha greeted us wearing a Russian cap and a long, formal coat. His rifle slung over his shoulder, he looked like a guard outside of the royal palace. He began the tour of the of the once wealthy community by telling us that “It was a privilege to live here.” He showed us the northernmost empty swimming pool, and the cultural center complete with a stage and the northernmost out of tune grand piano. Outside stood the northernmost statue to the grandfather, Lenin. The wide, open central walkway of the town was known as the Champs Elysee, and the apartment reserved for women was known as Paris. Now only two women live in town, and Sascha lives “like a monk.” Above the town hovered the wooden frame that houses the rails of the coal mining cars. It snaked high up the mountain. On the face of the pyramidal mountain someone had placed wooden planks spelling out Peace on Earth.
Kittiwake hotelLike many abandoned places, wildlife has moved in. What was once yellow brick apartments was now a Kittiwake hotel. On every window ledge the white gulls had constructed mud and grass nests where they sat brooding over their eggs. The constant calls of the gulls sounded like Italian mothers sitting at a balcony chatting with each other. From time to time there would be a silence, followed soon by a great uproar.
A short walk brought us to some healthy looking reindeer. “This is special grass,” Sascha explained. When Pyramiden was in its heyday rich soil was brought in by ship from the Ukraine. “Big ship, Ukraine to Pyramiden,” he repeated to emphasize the absurdity of this. It isn’t special grass, it’s really just grass, but it doesn’t belong in this landscape. It did thrive, however, and for a time there was a farm, complete with cows and chickens. The grass is still growing green and the reindeer love it.
Coal mine on Pyramiden mountainFurther on a fox crept across the above-ground pipes, then turned and stared at us. Nearby, a line of charred wood made me wonder if this could be the remains of what was burned during the Second World War. The town was abandoned and destroyed as the Nazis approached. In 1946, Russians returned, building what we now toured, all proof that communism works.
Until Berentsberg and Pyramiden I was living with one image of the north, one filled with icebergs and snow covered mountains and fantastic wildlife. From time to time we’d pass a wooden trappers hut, which told the story of subsistence hunting on this land, a life spare and hard that is easily romanticized (for the best of such narratives, read Christiane Ritter's A Woman in the Polar Night). I was imagining a peaceful land as well, not one touched by war. Pyramiden re-sculpted my view of the north into something less pristine, less peaceful. Pyramiden might be a ghost town, but the story it tells brought to life the complexity of this Arctic landscape.
August 15, 2014 in Arctic, Birds, Norway, Travel