Nature abounds in lessons and metaphors. But they’re sub­tle, only obvi­ous when we pause long enough to actu­al­ly see, rather than mere­ly look through lens­es cloud­ed by haste or preconceptions.

Time to actu­al­ly see is one of many advan­tages of pad­dling a kayak in the ear­ly morn­ing, when there are more ani­mal and bird than human species of neigh­bours out and about.
This year, sev­er­al pairs of loons have man­aged to raise chicks to the point where there’s a bet­ter than even chance they’ll make it through to migra­tion time.
Loons usu­al­ly only hatch one egg a sea­son. Par­ent­ing is a shard­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty, and the chal­lenges are myr­i­ad. The still fluffy feath­ers that blend in with the dark water and shore­line indi­cate the chicks are about sev­en weeks old, the loon equiv­a­lent of teenagers. As with humans, it’s a cru­cial tran­si­tion peri­od between total depen­dence on their par­ents for food and secu­ri­ty, and learn­ing skills they will need to sur­vive on their own. The les­son for us is that loon par­ents let their off­spring learn by tri­al and error, rather than try­ing to ful­fil their every whim and solve every prob­lem, big or small.
At least one is always drift­ing near­by, watch­ing. Or in this case, look­ing for prey. If my kayak and I posed a threat, the peace and qui­et would be rent by a yodel, a short, rapid “oo-oo-oo-oo-et”, to tell me to go away.
Instead, the par­ent issues a sin­gle low-pitched “hoop” sound, assur­ing the chicks they are not alone, and my pres­ence has been noted.
There are so many dif­fi­cul­ties and threats in their world that the young­sters must learn to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the annoy­ing and the poten­tial­ly fatal, so they don’t waste time and ener­gy need­ed  to go about the end­less busi­ness of hunt­ing fish.

                   SURVIVAL ISN”T A GIFT

Life here is mea­sured not by the zero sum stan­dard of “win­ners” and “losers” a red-hat­ted leader we won’t sul­ly this piece by nam­ing asinine­ly declaims, but by resistance. 

The tree in the pho­to was knocked down in a storm four or five four years ago.
In spite of hav­ing pad­dled past it a hun­dred or more times, it took me until now to see it as a metaphor for the dogged deter­mi­na­tion of mil­lions of peo­ple in dire and des­per­ate sit­u­a­tions beyond their con­trol, who refuse to give up the strug­gle to survive.
Too often, their plights are deval­ued, or treat­ed as an annoy­ance, some­thing we wish would be out-of-sight-out-of- mind, not intrud­ing on the com­fort of the ver­sion of the world we want to enjoy.
Gulls fit that cat­e­go­ry, too.

Often dis­missed as rau­cous dis­turbers of the peace, their habit of reliev­ing them­selves on docks, boat cov­ers, swim plat­forms and any­where else incon­ve­nient to humans, has earned them the nick­name “Shit Birds”.
Oppor­tunis­tic scav­engers, their diet includes every­thing from ani­mal and plant mat­ter to car­rion and human scraps.
I like to think my fel­low cot­tagers are fas­tid­i­ous when it comes to dis­pos­ing of garbage.
In more than fif­teen years of pad­dling, I’ve picked up five float­ing dock bumpers, a few water toys, a hat, a life jack­et (with no one in it) and no actu­al lit­ter beyond a float­ing can or two and a cou­ple of snack pack­ets, all of which were almost cer­tain­ly blown rather than thrown off boats and docks. But humans being what they are, maybe we also owe a nod of thanks to scav­eng­ing gulls.

                    IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS

The flo­ra and fau­na that thrive here do so because they have adapt­ed to fit into the real­i­ties of the harsh­er aspects of Nature, rather than doing dam­age for short term com­fort. Per­haps the fact that the stress­es, strains and fran­tic pace mod­ern life afford so few of us the priv­i­lege and pos­si­bil­i­ty to learn from Nature, explains (in part) why humans are so hell-bent on run­ning roughshod over it. The lat­est moves and pro­pos­als to scale back reg­u­la­tions on green­house gas emis­sions in the U.S. (which will of course affect the rest of us, gulls and loons includ­ed), spit in the face of the sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus on cli­mate change, includ­ing U.N. reports seen as the ulti­mate stan­dard of cli­mate science.
But they are being hailed by auto mak­ers, the fos­sil fuel indus­try, as well as lib­er­tar­i­ans and con­ser­v­a­tives who con­sid­er the reg­u­la­tions bur­den­some.  That’s in spite of a con­stant del­uged of cli­mate change sto­ries with links to tips such as “how to pro­tect your men­tal health in the heat.”
A bet­ter link would be on ways to clean our lens­es, so we can see exam­ples and lessons that should have been obvi­ous in the first place.

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