Missing monarchs: love and loss

      My heart stopped when I heard this on the radio recently: “We've been looking for monarchs since the middle of July, but so far, we have yet to see one.” These were the words of a volunteer for the Maine Butterfly Survey.
     In disbelief I listened on: the voice-over said, “Thanks to the work of other citizen scientists across the monarch's range - from Minnesota and Michigan east to New York and northern New England - it's clear that the monarchs are missing."

     The monarchs are missing.

     There is a despair in me that I keep shut behind a door, a despair about the loss of life and beauty and the harmony of balanced ecosystems that results from civilization's narcissism. This news about the monarchs opens that door. Instinctively I look away from the despair, but like seeing in the dark, it becomes even more visible in my peripheral vision. The pain follows me around, and I can't seem to embrace the buddhist teaching that suffering is part of the path. You see, I have been intimate with the monarchs, and I don't want to face their disappearance.

      For years in September I would take Anna and Andrew and Meg out to find a monarch caterpillar, the beautiful green-and-black-and-yellow-striped guys hiding under a milkweed leaf. We would bring one in, set it up in a terrarium complete with its own milkweed in a vase of water, a netting cover for air, and a frisbee or something solid suspended at the top so that, when it was time, the well-fed caterpillar could climb up and begin its transformation. We watched the “J” stage; the completely miraculous creation of its chrysalis; and then we waited and waited as the color of the chrysalis changed from a honeydew green to a black mottled with orange and even gold dots. 
Yes, it was great for the kids – but really I was the one that thrilled to every change. When it was ready, we released the new butterfly into the same milkweed patch it came from, and watched wistfully as it flexed its wings and left us.

      It's September now, and I had to go look for myself. I needed to see if we had any caterpillars (though if I found one, I would not bring it in, not this year). I went to the patch of milkweed below the barn, left untouched on purpose when the fields were mown. I peered under dozens of leaves, looked for little nuggets of dark frass, checked for munched leaves. There were no caterpillars. I shut that widening door of despair as fast as I could, telling myself I would look in other patches I knew about... but I never did.

      Hope is a mysterious thing. It drifts through my psyche like a tenacious butterfly, surprising me like the single monarch I saw a few days later when I was walking our dog through the far end of the same field. There it was. One.

     Two nights ago, I had a dream. I was in a field, and all around me monarch butterflies were taking to the air. I was laughing with delight in my dream, and felt infused with joy. The amazing thing is that I still feel that joy in the cells of my body. It's real.
     I love the monarchs. And my pain comes from loving them and the fear of losing them. But my dream keeps hope alive. My question is the age-old one: is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Maybe the answer is that it is good to love and then let go when it is time. I don't know. I do know that because of my despair, the joy I still hold from the dream is more luminous; and because of that joy in my cells, the darkness of the despair is lessened. I think for now I just have to hold them both.

To follow the migration of monarch butterflies, look at this Journey North citizen-science website: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/News.html.
For ways to help, visit: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/conservation_action.html

To hear the radio story on Maine Public Broadcasting: http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/5347/ItemId/29765/Default.aspx

Photo credits:

Monarch on aster: By Thompson Greg, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons 

Monarch caterpillar: By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Monarch chrysalis: By aussiegall from sydney, Australia (Its Nearly Ready Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Monarchs flying: By Sonia Carolina Madrigal Loyola from Nezahualcoyotl, Estado de México [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Hanging laundry

Dear Meg,

      Did you smell it? That first night in your new dorm room, when you got into the bed and pulled the sheets up around you, did you smell the sunshine? It's just a small thing, but I've been longing to know, kind of like when you send someone a present and wish you were there to see them open it. Maybe it only lasted a second, that smell of fresh air. But it's a strand of warmth and light from our backyard reaching into the ­strange building you now live in; a thread of connection from my seemingly simple life at home to the great expansion of yours at college.
     When you and Andrew and Anna got home from camp late this summer, you dumped out your duffel bags on the back deck and I did all those loads and loads of laundry. The weather was perfect for hanging it out to dry. I love hanging laundry: the slowness of it; the sunshine; hearing the birds and the late summer “ch-ch” of the insects; watching the wind become visible in the ripple of the sheets; feeling the coarseness of the towels. Hanging laundry is an act of optimism. And it's sensual.
     By the time the last loads were folded, we were already getting you packed to leave again. We bought those rough, not-too-expensive sheets in Twin Extra Long for your dorm bed, and two new bath towels. I didn't want them to be strangers. So in the last couple of days that you were home, I washed them too, and hung them out to dry. I have a picture in my mind, Meg, of looking up at my hands pinning them to the line and the bluebird sky beyond. At that moment, it was as if time and distance stretched, and I sensed you climbing into your new dorm bed and smelling the sunshine.

      It's ok if you didn't smell it. Really, this is my story. Hanging the laundry that day, I was happy and I was connected to you. Like tucking a note in your lunchbox, it's my act of giving that is the love. That love is still in there, whether you actually smelled it or not. It doesn't need confirmation. It just is.
     You go, girl. Be brave in your new world. And when you come home, there will be fresh clean sheets on your bed.

Love,  Mom

Catwalks

     This story is the best way I can convey the experiences, inner and outer, of this summer. They didn't literally happen this summer, but kind of...   A little more explanation is at the end.

CATWALKS

      The canoes first appeared as dots, emerging from behind the slim silhouette of an island across Devil’s Bay. At first I wasn’t sure. No one else had seen them yet. Children were jumping off the diving tower; parents were milling on the shore. All around me, there was a thread of adrenaline rippling through the waiting families. But when I shifted my stare just a little, I could see them in my peripheral vision: five canoes on the silver water.

      Of course, from where I was standing on the camp’s dock I couldn’t tell they were wood. But like my daughter, I too had traveled this raw landscape in these timeless boats at the rhythmic pace of a paddle stroke. I had portaged loads over the ancient pathways between lakes. I knew her anticipation of this moment, this victorious return.

      Her canoe trip was coming in after nearly forty days. These girls -- no longer girls but hard-tested young women -- had traveled far to the North. Some of them would be changed physically, from soft to muscular, round to lean, thin to strong. All of them would be changed emotionally. The exuberant whooping they would sing as they closed in on us would be a song of triumph – a band of women bound together through trial, mishap, deep beauty, and intimacy. The moment of return, to “civilization” we had called it, was both glory and despair: we had done it! -- it was over.

       Instinctively my heart tightened. Though I stood on the dock among the families as just another mother, in truth I was out there, on the water, under way.

       ~           ~           ~           ~           ~         ~          ~

      “Air raid!” shouted Heather in the front canoe. In my boat, the two campers and I threw down our paddles, kicked off our boots and jumped over the gunwales into the cool depths of Florence Lake. As my body left the glittering sunlight and sank through the blue, I opened my mouth, drinking in the clean water. This was no boggy “piss pond” between portages. This was a big, deep, clear, rock-lined lake that captured the blue sky in fluid play. I burst through the surface and laughed out loud as the others leaped from their canoes around me. Air raids were the champagne of a canoe tripping day: a mischievous, chaotic, giddy reward. And we had earned it.

      In this glacially carved land, travel is easiest on water. Crossing between lakes is hard. I had lumbered across many miles of portages over the summers as a camper, bearing a canvas Duluth pack with leather shoulder straps and a broad tump band across my sweaty forehead.

      This summer I was a counselor, and I carried the wanigan, a rectangular plywood box as wide as my shoulders. It held difficult-to-pack items like the billy set and the knives, and for the first few days, a couple dozen eggs. Borne by only a tump, it was a certifiable torture device. My campers laughed at my “wanigan wiggle”, a trademark walk the wanigan bearer develops. My hips and legs would deftly zigzag around rocks in the trail while my neck and back remained rigid under the box. Particularly tricky was walking the crude log catwalks over a bog. They required balance and agility. I was good at carrying a wanigan, though a sore was developing in the small of my back where it rubbed.

      An hour before the Florence Lake air raid, we had arrived at a notoriously difficult portage. As usual it was a scramble. We dragged the packs out of the canoes and hoisted them onto the campers’ backs. It was like loading a mule train, except most of the girls looked more like long legged colts. They were anxious, but, tumps adjusted and paddles in hand, they staggered off together, one behind another.

      The portage was long, wet and buggy. Relief would come only at the end, when the trail climbed up over a dry ridge before it came down to the landing at Florence Lake. As I trudged along with the wanigan, lost in the Zen zone that allowed me to ignore the mosquitoes, I looked up to see one of the girls sitting slumped on a rock ahead. It was Heather. Her canvas pack and paddles were on the ground. Everyone knows that on portages you don’t sit down, because it’s even harder to get up – it's best to just keep going. Two-stepping in front of her was a still-loaded girl, urging her onward. Heather just shook her head. As I approached, the dancing girl said, “Well I’m going to get them over with”. She turned and walked on.

      Ahead were catwalks.

      Old pine and birch logs lay paired end-to-end, stretching away from us like a narrow raft over the marshy muskeg.  Catwalks inspired dread.  The girls had all heard stories about someone who fell off and was either stranded like a turtle on her back, or mired up to her hips unable to escape.  Crossing catwalks took self-assurance.  These were the first of this trip, and the sight of them had crumbled the will of the already faltering girl.

     The only way to get Heather across was to splint her weakened spirit to mine.  We got her pack on, and I told her to follow my steps.  Humor helped, and as I mounted the logs with her close behind, I told her to watch my wanigan-wiggle for the infamous marsh-wiggle variation.  Step-by-focused-step we walked log lengths, crossing from fat logs to narrow, some decaying, some partially submerging under our weight.  The mosquitoes clamored around our ears, but we didn't swat at them for fear of losing our balance.  A forward rhythm seemed to help, giving us the momentum to move lightly.  At long last, the mire underneath transitioned to mud, and then finally to dry land.

Heather unlocked her gaze from my feet and looked up: a whooping and hooting started. Three girls had waited for us. Fully loaded with packs and paddles, ignoring their instincts to get to the end, they wanted to cheer on their tripmate and walk the last section together. Heather surged toward them, victorious. The four of them high-fived and set off in unison up the trail, singing. I shifted the wanigan away from my sore spot and followed.

    ~           ~            ~           ~            ~            ~

      I found myself gently massaging the small of my back when a shout went up around me on the dock. The five canoes on Devil's Bay had been sighted. Younger children clambered out of the water to stand dripping, watching. The approaching dots on the water became canoes with flashes on both sides, sunlight reflecting off the blade of each wet paddle dipping in time. We waited.

In numbered minutes, the trip would be over. Each girl-woman would be welcomed back into the throng of parents to resume her role as daughter, and tomorrow she would be driven away in a car. But none of them were the same: the wood, the water, the sweat and their shared stories were in these young women now, and they were beautiful and strong.

Their song rose suddenly across the water. It was a glorious moment. As the crowd on the dock roared, the girls raised their paddles high in the air, in salute, in unison.

      I wrote this story years ago. When Bob and I were checking out canoe tripping camps on Lake Temagami for Meg, my own memories of tripping (with a different camp) emerged, and I couldn't believe I might one day be the parent on the dock when I really still felt like the teenager in the canoe.  Catwalks has come true, and I stood on Wabun's dock this summer and watched Andrew and Anna paddle in with their own sections to a glorious reception.  And Meg paddled in too... as a counselor, leading her campers over the lakes and across the portages of their first canoe trip.
     The details of this story -- place names and locations, tripping style -- are real but not perfectly accurate.  For example, the portage I describe goes into a different lake than Florence, but I love those clear blue waters and there is no better place for an air raid.


  

Anna's birds

     In the last post, I wrote about Anna's bird drawings.  Here are the four birds she completed for me before she went to Wabun.  I found when I was writing about birds, I needed a picture to go with the recordings I had made, but it was too hard for me to get my own good photos.  This is her gift to the blog -- and to me.

Phoebe

The phoebe says its own name - incessantly. 
(First posted in "Coming home" - 4/9/13)
 
Black-throated green warbler

The black-throated green's "zee-zee-zee-zo-zee" is one of the earliest and most discernable warbler songs of the spring. 
(First posted in "Spring ephemerals" - 4/30/13)

Common yellow-throat (warbler)

The "wichety-wichety-wichety" of this small bird usually comes from shrubby or wet areas. I recorded this one down the road in some alders around the wet area in the field.

Ovenbird (warbler)

The ovenbird is a nearly invisible warbler of the deep woods, but its "teacher-teacher-teacher" song can't be missed.  I haven't heard one in several days now, and so I offer this track from the public domain (thanks to dmoon9931!).

Fledging

     The dawn chorus these days is changing. It's mid-summer; the sun is high, the meadow grasses are wheat-colored, it's hot. Most of the birds are no longer setting up territories and singing for mates as they did in the spring. This is the season of fledging. 

     Before Anna left for the summer to paddle the mighty Coulonge River in Quebec, I asked her to draw four of our favorite birds for me. I had recorded their songs with my i-thing because their songs are so distinctive, and I want to be able to offer a picture of them without infringing on anyone's copyright.

     She sat on the tall chairs at the island in the kitchen, bird books spread before her, intent on her work. Before my eyes, this mascara-wearing attentively-dressed teenage athlete shrank down to the little blonde tomboy with bangs and braids who used to sit at the counter in her plaid shirt and cargo shorts, drawing birds with the same consummate intensity. Anna drew birds pretty much from the start. When she was in Kindergarten, she would invite her best friend over, and I'd find them sitting at the kitchen counter playing games with the bird book: sometimes it was flipping through it randomly and trying to name the birds they opened to, often it was drawing birds side-by-side.  On the walls of our rather grown-up looking dining room are two
 bird portraits done by Anna when she was age 7 or 8: a downy woodpecker, and a peacock. On my desk in my shed is a cigar box painted with a sandhill crane. Her “special box” in the basement, the place where each child keeps the mementos of their childhood, is filled with bird drawings.

     She's fledging now. At Wabun, her first two years of canoe trips were loops, always returning to the base. This year is a long river trip – they go straight out to journey the length of the Coulonge and challenge themselves with the whitewater and wilderness that come with it. Her one letter that made it here before they left post offices and cell phone towers behind was filled with exclamation points. Her wings are strong; she's off.

     And here at home, the phoebe and the black-throated green warbler, the ovenbird and the common yellowthroat are still singing, but not like they were. These are the mornings of crows and the song sparrows. The song sparrows have nested nearby, and when I am in the garden they sing as if to warn of my presence. The crows are also a family now; the young follow the adults, begging for food, cawing in their plaintive nasal voice. In the recording, you can hear them behind the very assertive call of the adult. These are the birds that wake me before dawn.

     By the time Anna returns, the young crows will no longer be dependent. Who will sing in the morning? Maybe it will be quiet – or maybe there will be another shift: soon it will be the time of the late summer crickets and cicadas invisibly buzzing, whirring and droning from the meadow. And Anna will ask, “Can I drive?”

Fireflies

My road overlooks swallow fields,
currents of long grass 
come to rest,
the hush of evening
ribboned
by the remaining veery
in woods beyond.

Out there, patiently, one hope flares,
then another, another,
rising,
loosening from the earth to fly
in between.

Some answer is there,
afloat with the silent fireflies,
almost within reach.
Looking up, I see
the mirror.
What do I expect from stars?
I don't even know
my question.

Turning, the road cool now,
I head toward home.
Flash
by my hip:
Heaven,
silently dancing,
almost bumping into me.

The Veery

     I never know where a teacher will come from. 

     There are teachers that are acclaimed for their teachings; you can read their books or go to their church or attend their weekend workshops. Some of these teachers are only the skin of a balloon, and need the attention of their students to inflate them.

     Others, I believe, still see themselves as students, even as their way of being in the world attracts followers. Teachings flow into and out of them like water spilling from one pool to the next in a waterfall, constantly filling and emptying, student-as-teacher-as-student. These teachers may also be acclaimed, or one might be the person you keep running into at the grocery store.

     My most recent teacher was a bird.

     A Veery is a woodland thrush, a robin-sized brown bird that is known not for its looks but for the unusual way it sings. It is a polyphonic singer. This means that the Veery can literally sing with two voices simultaneously. It uses both sides of its syrinx (its voicebox), and it can control each separately. To me, the Veery's two-voiced song is neither harmonious nor melodic, but nonetheless to hear it echoing out of the forest is thrilling.

     I heard the Veery sing the day before Meg left for the summer. I had just returned from watching my nephew play Little League baseball, and the slowness and sunshine of the rising summer was in me. But so was the force of emptiness that was coming: after Meg left, I had only ten days before Anna and Andrew would leave. Then, the house would be still. That feeling I loved and longed for – quiet, slowness – was also the thing I dreaded. My heart pumped two different songs simultaneously, and they stuck in my throat.

     I stopped writing. I just couldn't “find time”. The words weren't there, bubbling up like they usually are. I could feel confusion in my heart, and an aching at not being able to give it voice. But the Veery's song stayed with me, and I knew there was some wisdom in it, and that when the quiet came, I could tease out the strands and finally write the song that would free my voice.

     In the abrupt quiet on the afternoon that Andrew and Anna left, I took a long walk in the drizzle. I brought my i-thing that records voice memos. As I walked, the unformed feelings of the Veery's song in me began to take shape, and I recorded them line by line. I knew I had captured the twin-voiced song by the time I returned home, and felt released. But when I sat down to transcribe the song into a poem, I found that somehow I had inadvertently deleted the recording. I had nothing.

     Here it is, the thing that is finally coming clear to me: it's not about the song, it's about the singing. My teacher, the Veery, does not hold onto her song. She sings it, the whole polyphonic inharmonious cascade of it, and it's gone. And then she sings another one. I have so many songs in my heart that trying to put order on them, words to them, meaning around them, threatens to stopper my voice. My mind gets in the way – but that's not where the song comes from. Sing first; keep singing; and then write. It may not always make sense, but the Veery has opened me to the polyphonic voices of my own heart.
--------------------
The recording of the Veery is by Andrew Spencer, and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.  For more information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/