Final Post ... for the semester

Darling buds of May April

I’ve grown attached to this pond (and its neighbor to the north) over the course of this semester. I might not be required to come, watch and listen any longer, but I know I’ll continue to visit. All the plants and creatures that were dormant all winter are only starting to wake up and bloom or swim. I don’t want to miss the action.

The blogging assignment has been a gift. Each spring I watch for the baby geese when I run or walk through the park. Aside from that I never paid much attention to the geese, except to carefully step over the mess they leave on the paths. Over the past winter, my curiosity about the geese has grown into a curiosity about the other birds I share this city with. I listen now, and wonder how long it takes a person to learn to distinguish the different chirps. I watch them watch me, their heads tilted to the side as if compensating for a sore neck. Every day when I walk Mucho, I see two birds—I think they’re female robins—feeding in the grass at the church down the street. They move so quickly sometimes the worms or insects they pick up fly out of their beaks, so they have to start the hunting and pecking all over again. It looks comical. Is there some evolutionary reason or adaptation that caused this behavior? Is it just me making them nervous? I’m more inspired to do a little research, see if I can answer these questions after taking this class.

I used to tease Stella and tell her I was president of the science club in my high school. Because my lack of scientific knowledge is a joke. I barely passed. I wasn’t interested. Approaching biology, and skimming a few other science disciplines, through literature changed this apathy. I want to know more now. And I’m slowly becoming more comfortable writing about nature, what it means to me and what it might mean for my fellow city dwellers.

I came into the class not knowing much about what nature writing is and what it can be. I’ve fallen in love with the genre. I still find some pieces too meditative and lacking human presence, but we read a lot that was full of life and full of surprise. I’ve been inspired by Jenny Price and her look at the Los Angeles River, Lisa Couturier’s close looks at nature in the city, and Terry Tempest William’s thoughtful writing about women and wildlife, particularly birds. 

For the Chickadees: This Must Be the Place

What a difference two weeks makes. The pond has shaken itself free of the snow and ice and gray that has blanketed it for months. More birds have arrived. The geese still patrol the island, along with some gulls. No more herons, or at least there weren’t any when I went this week. And a group of about five turtles sat on a big rock just off the island. How long have they been awake?

Many more humans have arrived as well. I brought Henry and Stella with me, since it was so nice out. All winter when I visited the pond, the other people I saw were usually alone, usually quiet. On this sunny afternoon, the boardwalk was full of families, couples and lots of other dogs. And Stella spotted some fish.

Spring is sprung

We entered by the former boathouse. Right away, Henry and Stella spotted toy in the water—one of those hollow plastic zoo souvenirs. The bright green ape floated on his back close enough to the sidewalk that my kids thought they could reach in and pick it up. When they couldn’t grab it, they spent some time looking for a stick to push it into the tall pond grass, where they thought they’d be able to grab it. But there were  no sticks around. So we walked on.

Under the pedestrian bridge, I showed them the mud on the beams, put there so barn swallows can build nests. “Do you think someone throws that up there?” Stella asked. They must. “That would be a fun job,” she said.

We planned to stay for only 20 minutes. Everyone had homework. But once we were there, it was hard to leave. We walked the entire half-mile boardwalk then stopped in the pavilion to take photos.

As I’ve been blogging about the boardwalk, so has the zoo staff. Their most recent entry says the birdfeeders I spotted last time I was at the pond are not actually feeders. They’re meant to be homes for black-capped chickadees. Like woodpeckers and nuthatches, chickadees are cavity-nesting birds. Many birds have returned to the pond since the renovation, such as red-winged blackbirds and house finches. But cavity-nesting birds don’t have as many opportunities to find homes where the trees are healthy and thriving—not as many cavities. So the zoo hung nesting boxes, with openings that are too small for sparrows, one of the chickadees’ main housing competitors. The zoo hopes that starting this year, migrating chickadees will like the boardwalk as well as the herons and geese do.

The Great Fresh Lake

I didn’t really understand what a Great Lake was until I moved to Chicago. I’d seen Lake Michigan before, when visiting relatives in Detroit. I registered that it was large enough that you can’t see across, but I never thought about the actual size of the lake.

When I was still new in town, a friend back in New York asked if I jogged around the lake. I did jog, and I often did it near the lake. But around the lake? Only then did I stop to consider how many miles that would be. I knew it was more than ten miles to Evanston, the next town north of Chicago. I certainly can’t jog that far. Milwaukee is an hour north of that. In the other direction, a series of beach towns line Michigan’s shore—once you pass the Indiana dunes. A few months later a neighbor told us about driving around the lake on a family vacation. The 1,100 mile drive takes at least four days, and covers four states.

One thing that surprised me about the lake when I first spent time around it is the sand. The beaches in Indiana and Michigan have high dunes, similar to the Atlantic coast beaches I knew growing up. How does sand get to the middle of the country? Was it always here, or was it carried from one of the oceans, drifting from great lake to great lake?

The first few times I went swimming in the lake I expected salt. The water hits the shore like water in a bay. Small waves become big waves when storms blow through. It looks like the ocean. I yanked my dog back from the water when I caught him drinking my first winter in Chicago—the only time of year dogs can be on the beach.

I find the lack of salt fitting. Chicago is cleaner, easier to navigate because of a grid system, and feels more orderly. I wouldn’t call Chicago bland, but New York is saltier in many senses: people are harder and more hurried, the streets are dirtier, and the subway map looks like a tangled mess.

Salt or no salt, the lake gives Chicago a sheen and a character. I saw Terry Tempest Williams read recently, and she told her audience that she feels a kinship with Chicago. Like her hometown of Salt Lake City, this city has an inland sea. And, accordingly, it has its own sea mythology. Wrecked ships lurk on the bottom. Surfers call it the Third Coast. In the summer, beaches fill with blankets and coolers and people looking out at the water, away from the tall buildings and chaos behind them. The lake offers city dwellers an escape, even if only for a few hours.

I'll Explain Everything to the Geese

Last winter I listened to the album High Violet by the National almost every day. It fit the cold weather, the quiet that winter engenders. And I spent most of the winter thinking that, in the song "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks," the geeks were geese—despite the song title. I thought the singer was saying, “I’ll explain everything to the geese.” It follows “swans are a swimmin.” It makes sense. I’d walk around the North Pond, look at the geese and wonder where to start, what to explain first. A wise teen explained everything to me: It’s the geeks not the geese.

Still, I think of that song lyric when I watch the Canada geese. They’re a hardy bird, wintering in Chicago. They could probably explain a lot to me. Lately they don’t dominate the ponds in Lincoln Park. The migrating birds are descending.

At the South Pond when I went on the bitterly cold first day of Spring, there weren’t any of the songbirds that have arrived at the North Pond. But the water was more populated. Different species of ducks swam in the water. A noisy group of Canada geese had taken over the island. I wondered if their honking had something to do with courtship. Or, had courtship finished and was it the sound of mothers worried about their eggs? Perhaps it had nothing to do with mating, and it was everyday alarm over a predator.

The black-crowned night herons also stood along the island’s shoreline. They’d come down from the tree. With their necks hunched and their beaks pointed down, they looked grumpy and forlorn. When I search for photos on the web, I can see their necks aren’t always hunched. They’re capable of looking regal; they have long necks. On this day, I’d imagine the cold kept them from stretching out, kept their heads hanging low.

Roof of the education pavilion

There’s still no action in the pond grass. Some bits of ice clung to the shoreline, creating a lacy, bubbly border between the water and the land. Were the fish still hovering at the bottom, or had they become more active in recent weeks? If their bodies react to air temperature, they must still be in winter mode. Do the fish wake when the insects wake, or do they move independently?

The human overseers of the pond were visible, though not actually present. Small wood birdfeeders had been nailed to several trees, so even if the insects are still hibernating the migrating birds can find food.

The unfortunately named People’s Gas Education Pavilion, without a cover of snow, looked more inviting. I never noticed the wood, or whatever pressed recycled material the pavilion is made from, has an eggshell finish that catches the sunlight so instead of looking white, it’s more pink and blue. The panes of Plexiglass that form the roof refract sunlight, making a pattern of rainbow colors inside. In the white and gray wash of earlier weeks, it looked like a crude interloper on the shore. In the sun it’s pretty. The structure, open on both ends, provides a frame for the city skyline in the distance. In the warm months, someone will stand in there and explain everything to some students or potential donors to the zoo. The geese will hold on to their secrets.