They never look up

Editor’s note: This essay by Ducks Unlimited Canada’s scientist emeritus Mike Anderson was originally published in Ducks Unlimited Canada’s Conservator magazine in 2004. Twenty years later, the story still resonates.  Enjoy the read!

I looked down, grabbed my empty grocery bags, and locked the truck.  That’s when I noticed him – across the parking lot, another man, immobile, staring up at the sky.  I turned up to seek the birds again, but was compelled to consider further my silent partner.  At a distance, he looked to be 70 years or so, lean, with brown leathery skin that had felt north winds before.  I debated whether it was right to break his reverie, but I needed to find out who he was.  So, I strolled over, stopping a few respectful steps away and looked to the sky again.

“Quite a movement”, I observed without looking down.

“Hmm?….Ya”, was my meager reward.

“You hunt?”, he added as couple of flocks later.

“Yep”, I offered, “but not much this year.”

“Me too.  I used to farm up by Fergus Falls, but the kids wanted me to move to the city”.

We watched on in silence as the colours dimmed and the flocks gradually faded from sight.  When the obtrusive lights of the parking lot winked on and obliterated the sky, my companion opened the door of his car, and we parted.

“The trouble with city folks”, he said, sweeping his hand dismissively at the bustling parking lot, “is they never look up.”

He drove off and I headed into the store.

Twenty-eight years later I still carry the memory of that night – the chill, the sky, the birds, and especially the man who alone among all those busy people marked the passage of the birds and the coming of winter.

That’s partly why I return to the marsh each fall.  I never want to be counted among those too pre-occupied by daily life, or too lulled into torpor by a shielding city, not to participate in the rhythms of life – to feel deep inside the fundamental change that is water turning to ice.  For every animal, and for most humans throughout history in the north, no annual event is more profound.

Our disconnection from freeze-up, however, is merely part of modern humanity’s broader disconnection from nature.  For most of us, sheltering houses are something we buy and trim, but seldom erect ourselves, and few consider what stands between our bare skin and bitter cold.  Food comes from the store.  Potatoes aren’t planted piece by piece with just enough “eyes” to ensure sprouting; they come processed, sliced, salted, deep-fried, and arranged in little boxes.  Exotic salads spring magically on our plates, even in the dead of winter, carried to us on wings powered by the remnant oils of other plants long buried.  Meat is neatly packed in shrink-wrap, laid on an absorbent diaper to avoid any uneasy mess, far removed from the breathing sentient creature that piece of muscle helped move about.  Clean water, most precious of all, flows from our taps twelve months a year, and all we have to do is pay our trifling water bills.  Narrowing this perceptual chasm between ourselves and the world that sustains us is why we must continue to go to the marshes, woods and grasslands.

Everyone should experience freeze-up in a marsh – the sense of urgent business that drives the birds – the penetrating cold – the inescapable hint of fear dealt by crystalline water, syrupy under the canoe, when ice clings instantly at each paddle stroke.  To be part of freeze-up in a marsh is to be fully alive, fully aware of your own place in the web of life.

And for that day or two each year when the north wind chases autumn into memories, no matter where you are, make time to look up.