Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

If I had to choose one college course that changed my life, it would be a no-brainer. In the term before I graduated with my degree in elementary education at Michigan State, I took an environmental education class for teachers taught by Robert Hinkle in the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, a class that opened up the natural world to me. We learned a little plant and animal identification, but more importantly, we learned to appreciate those plants and animals and their natural rhythms and how everything had a place in one or more ecosystems and in our lives. That was the class that inspired me to go to grad school to take all the “ologies”—ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, and ecology, along with the other environmental classes and seminars Bob taught. I’d had so many questions about nature as a child, and now saw the way to get answers, preparing me to deal with those kinds of questions from my students.

What I most remember from Bob’s classes was his reading aloud from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, and other inspirational works. After he left Michigan State, he spent much of his career as chief naturalist at Cleveland Metro Parks and often wrote his own lovely, evocative essays about nature.

Now Bob is retired, but last week he shared a new essay with some friends. I yearned to hear it in Bob’s own voice, so he graciously recorded it for me. Here it is:

We Wait…

They come. If we could hear, hear beyond the traffic and the noise of civilization, if we could hear beyond the waves of a thousand beaches and whispers of wind through April’s greening branches, we could hear them. Softly, they start. Here and there, far to the south, they move. First one decides, then a dozen, then hundreds of thousands, and they come.

The humans do not notice. Trapped in an artificial world, trapped in bubbles of automobiles, buses, offices and factories, trapped in front of glowing computer screens and absorbed in the light of smart phones, we grow less smart with every generation. We fall into a fantasy world of our own making, where we are fed a constant stream of drivel and taught what to prize and what to fear. Each year the humans notice less, and they need us more.

And yet they still come, unheralded, feeling the tug of lengthening days and starlit nights. Southerly winds bear them northward, mile by mile, night after night, feeling the mysterious ancestral urging that forces them across rainforest, ocean, forests, fields, villages and cities. Below the humans sleep, unaware that overhead hundreds of millions of creatures pour tirelessly northward in a vast living stream, night after starlit night.

We wait. We step out onto darkened porches and listen, listen upward not out. Straining to hear, coffee in hand, we wait. Patience is a virtue and we must be virtuous. They will come. We want to be the first to hear, first to feel the quickening in our hearts when we know that the vast movement has begun to arrive. We want to feel the reassurance that they still live, they still move, and that once again they grace us with their being. Our daily life calls, reminding us that we have responsibilities after the long night. We must sleep, rest, and do our lives again tomorrow. We listen a little while longer anyway, that we might hear. Sometimes we do.

Ahead, the weekend beckons. Time to slip once again into the vast living aerial stream, time to renew old acquaintances at all the special places where the vast living sky-stream dips to earth each morning. The April air is warm, and the morning skies blue. Sun streams through the newly emerging leaves, revealing newly arrived travelers feeding, calling, and resting, all preparing for the next night’s sky journey. Some are home, however, and we welcome them as old friends returning once again, gracing our lives with their color and song. As April days lengthen, they are joined by a steady stream of others, some the same, many others different as the vast living stream pours northward each evening. And the best lies just ahead. April slips gracefully into May, and the vast waves northward still increase as the uncounted millions make their way northward, and home. By month’s end, they have arrived in the places where vast generations of their ancestors called home.

And we arrive. Watchers meet watched. For a few moments, feathered wonders touch our lives briefly, intertwine, then move on. The event is truly come as you are. Watchers share freely among all who come to see. Not much is needed - eyes and ears are all, one or the other or both. Binoculars are helpful. Some bring cameras, but without large lenses and large measures of luck, cameras can be left behind. A field guide is useful, but most watchers share willingly, and good sightings can be lost while searching the pages for unknowns. In the end, all that is important is being there, seeing the wonder and catching the spirit. All this is waiting for you, free. You invest only your time and the rewards are great. You have become part of a vast living river moving northward. Come out and watch and listen this weekend. Refind your part of the natural world that still stirs your soul.

This is Robert Hinkle, reporting from the field.