Last of the Season?

First of the season is easy to mark. The first warbler, the first crocus up, the first paddle. We know we have been deprived and the first arrival or event is a joy, the mark of more to come. But last of the season is tricky. Sometimes it passes without realizing that was the last climb, the last rose in bloom, the final hummingbird at the feeder (or, the last kiss…). I was afraid I had already paddled my kayak for the last time this year. The trouble is, I didn’t remember that paddle, had not cherished each minute as it needed to sustain me for several months. So when a string of warm, sunny November days arrived, I decided that this was my chance. My final paddle of 2011.

I drove to the Tivoli landing at 3:30, late for a November paddle. The dock was underwater at high tide. “Four and a half feet of tide,” a motorcyclist loitering by the water’s edge said. He then asked if I had any matches.  I shoved onto the water as I smelled the distinct sweet smell of pot float out onto the water with me.

Just south of Callender house, a long, yellow mansion that grins down onto the water, I saw a mature bald eagle perched in a tree. A twin to this bird stood high in a pine tree at the northern tip of Magdalen Island. This seemed good luck.

The tide was so high I could barely slip under the railroad bridge and into the North Tivoli Bay. But once I squeeze through an even greater calm took hold. I realized I would be paddling into dusk and hoped for an owl—why not?—to come out and join me. 

I meandered past the dried cattails, the reeds now dusty beige. A swamp sparrow hopped up to look at me. I took my time, savoring the texture of the water, the clear coolish air, the quiet. Then I heard a shuffling along the shoreline, in the leaves. I imagined a beaver there, or some other animal coming to drink. To my surprise, there shuffled a pair of wood ducks. I had never been so near to these beautiful, vivid ducks,  with their magnificent colors—the glossy green of the male’s head and the distinct white circle around the female’s eye. I slid away, whispering to them: don’t move, stay right there. Still, they took off,  a rush of wings. They took to the air and looped south. I paddled on, unsettled that I had flushed these birds. And then: a shot rang through the air. I stopped paddling; my shoulders hunched. My wood ducks had been shot. I looked to the sky to see if one tumbled to ground. One duck lagged behind the other—perhaps wounded?—but they were both winging north. I watched until they disappeared on the horizon. I would never know what happened to those ducks. But my first thought was: I killed these ducks. If I had not flushed them they would be safe on shore in the north bay. And in that moment I vowed not to paddle in the bays during duck season again. This is not what I had in mind for my final paddle of the season.

I couldn’t bear to paddle on, so I turned around, heading back for the river. The sun made an indecent display as it sunk behind the Catskills. The colors were so wild, so vivid, for a moment I forgot my sadness over the ducks. I loitered in the wide bay by the tracks where a man stood, a pole extended into the water.

“Do you fish here often?” I asked.

“I do,” he said without looking toward me.

“Do you ever hear owls?” I asked.

“Not owls,” he said. “I saw one once, but it was hit by a train.”

No, this was not what I was looking for on my final paddle of the season. I coasted out of the bay and back onto the river, then chugged my way north. As I pulled my boat out at the dock—now above the tide line—darkness set in. And I thought: this can’t be my final paddle of the season. Though it is often the complexity of the river that intrigues me—tug boats sharing the water with kayaks, industry next to snapping turtles—on this final paddle I wanted only the good. So I will go out one more time looking for an outing that leaves a cleaner taste, a happier memory.

Arctic Dreams

 “Sometimes there’s an owl, and sometimes there isn’t,” explains Pa in Jane Yolen’s beautiful book, Owl Moon. And what I want to add is: those “sometimes” are not of equal weight. It should read: very infrequently there is an owl, but every now and again when you are super lucky there is an owl. But that is too clunky and it’s important to keep hope, especially for children.

I am a person of hope, which means I spend a lot of time looking up pine trees for owls. I have been rewarded a few times, especially last January when I found a long-eared owl. But if I clocked the number of hours I look for owls, I would be embarrassed.

Come winter I start to hope for something really special, like a snowy owl, that gorgeous, large, white owl that brings news from the Arctic. My goal is to find one, but short of that, I was happy to go see one that had been posted to various bird sites for a few weeks now. It was hanging out near a reservoir on the New Jersey, Pennsylvania border. So on the day after Thanksgiving Peter and I decided to try and find this wintering bird.

MeadowlandsWe had spent Thanksgiving morning not helping with cooking the family feast, but rather birding in the Meadowlands. I’ve always been intrigued by the Meadowlands—a grassy, tidal area that I whiz past on the New Jersey Turnpike, usually rushing to Newark Airport. It doesn’t sound particularly appealing, with a capped dump nearby. But on a sunny, calm day, it was beautiful. In the distance we could see Manhattan, and in front of that the steady flow of traffic on the Turnpike. But what we focused on were a series of ducks: a black duck, a set of ruddy ducks with their erect little tails, buffleheads, with their dramatic black and white heads, and a duck with a black butt—a Gadwall. We then threw in our weight with the pumpkin pie (both making and eating).

Black Friday, while some had already spent a few hours shopping, we were speeding toward Pennsylvania, passing right by the Merrill Creek Reservoir near Phillipsburg, New Jersey. No one had posted a sighting of the owl in the past few days so we headed out with scope, cameras and only a little bit of hope. The parking lot had a line up of cars; all were intent on seeing the owl.

The reservoir is a beautiful, vast lake, a few ring-billed gulls loitering overhead. A pair of bald eagles perched in a tree. We walked down a wide dirt path then along a breakwater. A jumble of scree lined the breakwater that held the water back. And somewhere in that scree sat an owl. In other words we were looking for white on light grey.

We passed a trio of birders heading home.

“See the owl?”
“No owl,” they reported. And I felt my heart sink.

But they had seen a red-necked grebe. My heart lifted a little.

There is a bird in there!The other birders scanned the scree in search of the bird. So did we. The slope was vast, tundra-like, exactly what this bird knew best. And then I put my binoculars to my eyes and there was a rock that moved. That had black spots. That was shaped like an owl. That was an owl. My hands shook in excitement.

A snowy owl hunts at dawn and dusk. And for the rest of the day it rests, in the sun. And that is what it did while we watched, and photographers took thousands of photos of every yawn and fluff. And it watched us as well. And then we left it to sleep, to carry on its Arctic dreams.

Photo by Peter Schoenberger