If you think you need to travel out of the country or out of the province to see exotic, colourful, rare and sometimes even weird plants and animals, think again.
With patience and a willingness to explore our forests, wetlands, shorelines and meadows, we can find plenty of natural treasures right on our doorstep. Let’s go on a walk together. As we set out, we’ll discover many of the region’s protected lands which, under the stewardship of conservation authorities, provincial parks, the Nature Conservancy of Canada and local land trusts, provide the all-important habitat that animals and plants depend on. Bring your binoculars, bug spray and a camera, and let’s go explore. We’ll tread carefully, keep our distance, and give these treasures the respect they deserve.
LUNA MOTHIf we head into the woods at night in June or early July, we might see a luna moth; it will be a sight we won’t soon forget. One of North America’s largest moths, measuring about the size of your open hand and lime green in colour, the luna’s list of exotic features includes spectacular black-and-yellow eye spots on its wings meant to scare away predators.
From there, things just get weirder. To start with, the luna has no mouth. For its two short weeks as a fully-developed moth, during which it finds a mate and lays eggs, the luna relies on food it gathered as a caterpillar in the hardwood forests. Lunas spend the bulk of their lifecycle, including the winter months, as pupae inside a cocoon.
Luna moths are less abundant now than in the past. They navigate by moonlight and become confused by artificial bright lights. Sadly, they are also hunted by the parasitic flies that have been introduced to control spongy moths (formerly called gypsy moths). We’ll keep our eyes open for them at dusk on the edges of hardwood woodlots and conservation forests where, if we’re lucky, we might see one silhouetted by the moonlight, looking for a mate.
As our Ganaraska and Northumberland forests mature, a combination of selective harvest practices and natural processes are encouraging increased species diversity among the red pine and other softwoods planted to stabilize soils in the mid-1900s.
AMERICAN BITTERNSecretive and elusive. These are words you’ll often read in descriptions of the American bittern. They manage to avoid being seen despite their relatively large size – about the same as a mallard duck. But with their long necks and white, brown and black striping, they are perfectly camouflaged to blend in with their favoured habitat – marshes with tall vegetation.
Bitterns are masters at standing still and moving slowly. However, they strike with lightning speed, dining on fish, amphibians, insects and even small mammals. These days their population numbers are down, as wetlands are disappearing due to development and conversion to farmland. All the more reason to celebrate places like the H.R. Frink Conservation Area north of Belleville which has a 500-metre boardwalk that accesses a secret wetland and its inhabitants. It’s a great place to start our search for this treasure. Let’s make sure we take our binoculars and bug spray on this outing.
EASTERN RED-BACKED SALAMANDERAs forests mature, their floors amass leaf litter and rotting logs, and they develop distinctive “mound and pit” terrain from trees uprooted by storms. This is the perfect, and in fact only, habitat where we’ll see the eastern red-backed salamander, a small amphibian about the length of your finger whose distinguishing features include a red dorsal stripe.
Like many other members of the salamander family, the eastern red-backed has no lungs. Instead, it breathes through its skin, making it especially sensitive to moisture and temperature. When the weather is hot and dry, the salamanders retreat under logs and rocks or into the moist soil of the forest floor.
Red-backed salamanders eat mostly insects, along with small invertebrates such as millipedes and spiders. This time of year they’re busy mating, producing eggs that will hatch in a couple of months. Peter’s Woods Provincial Nature Reserve, north of Centreton, provides the ideal habitat for the eastern red-backed salamander, where it thrives in the moist, woody debris and leaf litter found in the mature, mixed forest. However, over time, both the Ganaraska and Northumberland forests will develop more old-growth characteristics, which is good news for salamanders.
SHAGBARK HICKORYThe shagbark hickory is generally considered a Carolinian tree, but as with so many things in the natural world, boundaries are not absolute; our region fits neatly within its range. It is distinguished, when mature, by its shaggy bark which gives the tree its name. Younger specimens are smooth-barked.
A full-grown shagbark is an impressive sight, standing over 100 feet and capable of living up to 350 years. They’re an important wildlife tree, growing nuts that feed species including red squirrels, raccoons, bears, foxes, wood ducks and wild turkeys. Humans also enjoy the nuts, which are delicious and can be substituted for pecans. Unfortunately, crops are unpredictable, so the shagbark nut is not a candidate for agricultural production.
As our Ganaraska and Northumberland forests mature, a combination of selective harvest practices and natural processes are encouraging increased species diversity among the red pine and other softwoods planted to stabilize soils in the mid-1900s. This means hardwoods such as the shagbark hickory will increasingly join the mix of trees. Along with their distinctive bark, we look for the five-bladed hickory leaves, and in a good year, clusters of nuts.
MILK SNAKESPity the poor eastern milk snake. Too often humans will stumble across one and decide they must kill it on sight, confusing its red and brown markings and tail-rattling behaviour with that of the venomous Massasauga rattlesnake, which in Ontario is found mainly around Georgian Bay and certainly not around here.
The milk snake gained its name from the mistaken belief that it takes milk from cows in barns, where they can often be found. But instead of being threatened or repulsed by milk snakes, we should appreciate that they help control pests by feeding on mice and other rodents.
The milk snake hibernates underground in rotting logs or in the foundations of barns or old buildings. Come spring, the females lay eight to sixteen elliptical eggs in decaying logs, stumps and small animal burrows. These eggs will hatch in August or September. The snakes mature in three or four years, growing up to a metre in length, and can survive seven to ten years in the wild. Human threats, besides cases of mistaken identity, include habitat loss and death by car tire.
AMERICAN MINKWe shouldn’t miss out on a walk along a rocky shoreline on Lake Ontario at, say, the Point Petre Conservation Area in Prince Edward County. If we look carefully among the rocks, we might see a glossy brown creature streaking along, a rolling sine wave. It’s not an otter – too small for that – or a weasel. We’re seeing an American mink, which not only runs impressively well, but also climbs trees and is semi-aquatic, able to swim three hours in warm water. Over time, the mink has adapted to aquatic life, acquiring a lowered heart rate, which helps it dive for food.
Not surprisingly, the mink dines primarily on fish, crustaceans and amphibians, although it will also feed on mice and even large birds such as seagulls and cormorants, which the mink will drown despite its apparent size disadvantage. Minks breed in late February, and at this time of year they are raising their just-born young, which will stay close to mom until fall and reach maturity next spring.
As we walk along the shoreline, we may catch a glimpse of a mink and her babies darting for cover between the rock crevices and the bushes.
​Norm Wagenaar
Published in Watershed Magazine - Summer 2024

This fall as the salmon fight their way up the Ganaraska to their spawning grounds, the growing crowds of anglers fighting for position along the riverbanks and rapids are causing chaos and concern for the future of the fishery.
The salmon are running. Tens of thousands of salmon are on their way from Lake Ontario to their natal waters in the Ganaraska River, a mass migration triggered by signals that include the change of seasons, the cooling water and the phase of the moon.
The annual return of Chinook and other salmon is a natural wonder worthy of celebration. But in recent years the spectacle has perhaps become too much of a good thing. The easy pickings of fish, as they wait in the shallows to pass through the bottleneck at Corbett’s Dam, just south of the 401 in Port Hope, has attracted hordes of anglers to the river’s lower reaches through the town where the practices of some have drawn criticism.
These practices have tarnished a very positive story – the establishment of a self-sustaining salmon run on the Ganaraska River. Before European colonization, Atlantic salmon thrived in Lake Ontario, returning for millennia to spawn in the waterways feeding it. For pioneers the fishery seemed inexhaustible. Settlers in the 1830s used torches and spears to collect as many as ten ninety-kilogram barrels of salmon in a single night.
By 1896 the species was extinct in Lake Ontario, the victim of a perfect storm of factors including overfishing, the construction of mill ponds that powered industry but blocked the ancient migration routes, and the wholesale clearing of central Ontario’s forests.
Waterways such as the Ganaraska slowly returned to health through the following century thanks in large part to reforestation efforts intended to stabilize waterflows and mitigate extreme spring runoffs, which flooded downtown Port Hope on a number of occasions. The return of salmonid fish species to Lake Ontario began in the late 1800s, when rainbow trout – an import from Western Canada – were introduced.
More western salmon came in the latter half of the 1900s when coho and Chinook were stocked in an effort to control alewives, which are native to the Atlantic Ocean. They were first noted in Lake Ontario in 1873 and became widespread in the Great Lakes basin after the opening of the Welland Canal. Once in the lakes, the invading alewives became a problem, consuming the early life stages of native species such as yellow perch and lake trout.
The coho and Chinook, which are saltwater fish, weren’t expected to survive without restocking. But today most of the salmon caught in the waters of eastern Lake Ontario are a self-sustaining population, emerging from eggs in spawning grounds in rivers such as the Ganaraska, spending their adult lives in Lake Ontario, where they’re prized by sport fishermen, and returning to their natal rivers to spawn and die. Between 65 and 90 percent of the fish coming up the Ganaraska this fall will be Chinooks, with coho and rainbow trout forming the next largest groups. A small number of brown trout and native Atlantic salmon, stocked in recent decades in an effort to re-establish a sustainable population, will also make the run.
Last year more than 30,000 salmon were counted on the fishway at Corbett’s Dam, just south of the 401. This fall the run is expected to be even bigger. The 2023 fall run was the largest observed since monitoring began in 2017. The Ministry of Natural Resources is expecting “significant returns of two large groups of Chinook salmon born in 2021 and 2022. While final counts will determine if this year sets a record, the recent increase is a positive indicator of sustainability of the fishery and Lake Ontario ecosystem.”
LIKE SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL
Corbett’s Dam, constructed in the 1850s by the Molson family to power a sawmill, a brewery and a distillery, presents a major obstacle between the lake and 30 kilometres of unobstructed river to where the salmon do most of their spawning. Only 1,000 to 2,000 salmon per day can pass through the dam’s fishway, which was constructed in the early 1970s, while many wait below the dam in a small sanctuary area. The MNR says that this is not big enough to accommodate and protect the thousands of migrating fish.
Downstream from Corbett’s Dam, flood control modifications to the river make fish migration even more complicated. The salmon accumulate in engineered step pools separated by shallow limestone stretches of water. According to the MNR, the fish confined in the pools “become concentrated and are highly visible and vulnerable, with no means of escape.” People have even been seen grabbing them with their hands. While a few fish may spawn below the dam, the area is not ideal for reproduction.
By 1896 Atlantic salmon were extinct in Lake Ontario, the victim of a perfect storm of factors including overfishing, the construction of mill ponds that powered industry but blocked the ancient migration routes, and the wholesale clearing of Central Ontario’s forests.
ANGLING FOR CHANGE
Sean Carthew is an avid angler and organizer of Port Hope’s annual Run Salmon Run event, which aims to put a positive spin on the run with family activities, music and food. He has observed both the epic salmon numbers and the angling activity it attracts. “Some years the river is just black with salmon.”
While Carthew acknowledges that anglers have been coming to the run for decades, in the past “it was annoying but not a big conversation.” In recent years, he says, it has grown worse and worse as anglers hear about the run through social media, bringing upwards of 30,000 into Port Hope over the five or so weeks of the spawning season. “Right through town, it’s just packed with fishermen.”
Carthew says that a lot of people are using the salmon as a food source. “Others are whipping out the eggs and throwing the fish on the banks.” The roe, sold as bait, is “big business.”
“They’re taking them out by coolers-full. They’re netting them. They’re snagging them. They’re picking them out of the water. It’s not fishing. I think the fish should have a chance to get upriver. It’s a black eye.”
​
Carthew’s response to the incidents of the 2023 run which included anglers catching over their limits, using illegal methods to catch fish, littering and gutting fish for their eggs then leaving their carcasses to rot, was to start an online petition calling for a closure of the salmon run fishery. It quickly gathered 13,000 signatures.
In light of the problem and the public response it generated, the Ministry of Natural Resources has proposed closing the fishing season in the protected section from the Jocelyn Street Bridge downriver to the CNR track between September 1 and October 14 and opening an extended late fall season from October 15 to December 31.
The MNR’s proposed regulations coincide with Carthew’s ideas. “It’s a super smart proposal that is fair to all, including the salmon. I believe it will, for the most part, stop the ridiculousness that happens along the river during the peak of the salmon run and offer something in return for the fishermen that do follow the rules by extending the season with late fall fishing. They take away six weeks of fishing during a time when the salmon are just too exposed and give back 10 weeks of fishing.”
Carthew’s original position – to close the fishery during the run – has evolved to include alternatives such as better enforcement of fishing regulations and littering bylaws. He also suggests sections of the river could be designated as different zones, some for education – which would not permit fishing, and others for barbless hook and fly fishing. “We should turn it into a positive.”
“They’re taking them out by coolers-full. They’re netting them. They’re snagging them. They’re picking them out of the water. Others are whipping out the eggs and throwing the fish on the banks. It’s not fishing. I think the fish should have a chance to get upriver.”SEAN CARTHEW
ENFORCEMENT VERSUS CLOSURE
Jason Whyte is not as enthusiastic about the new regulations. He has been involved with the Ganaraska River fishery for some five decades, as an angler and a volunteer with activities such as an annual “fish lift” to help salmon over Corbett’s Dam. He agrees with some of Carthew’s views, in particular the need for greater enforcement of fishing regulations but feels the river should be kept open to anglers.
He says it’s “not an issue of too many anglers but rather that certain people see it as a food source and a money source. They want to take that salmon home and don’t care how they get it.” He notes that a large fish could be worth $200 at supermarket prices at a time when “people have a hard time making the grocery bill.”
“Enforcement last year was the main kerfuffle,” says Whyte. He points out that in 2015 Port Hope trained municipal police officers so they could be deputized as conservation officers, an approach that successfully policed the anglers. Then during Covid, the fishery was closed. Last year, says Whyte, the municipality didn’t have enough trained police and its bylaw enforcement officer wasn’t working weekends.
He describes himself as “extremely torn” about the proposed regulation changes. “It’s an enforcement issue. The town dropped the ball big time the last two years.” He feels the changes will just move anglers to other rivers. “I am glad they are protecting a wild population but if it was their sole desire they would monitor other rivers too. This is just fixing a people problem in the town of Port Hope.”
Only 1,000 to 2,000 salmon per day can pass through the dam’s fishway, which was constructed in the early 1970s, while many wait below the dam in a small sanctuary area. The MNR says that this is not big enough to accommodate and protect the thousands of migrating fish.
AN UPSTREAM BATTLE
Port Hope Deputy Mayor Claire Holloway Wadhwani acknowledges the policing problems of recent years. She says a Ganaraska Salmon Working Group which included the municipality, its police service, the MNR, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) and the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority used to meet during the mid-teens but stopped meeting regularly during Covid.
She attributes the lack of trained police officers last year to personnel turnover, a shortfall that is being corrected with more training and extended bylaw enforcement. Holloway Wadhwani says that the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters is also planning to add a higher profile to its educational activities.
“This year they’re taking it down to the river in a more concentrated way” through a “Respect the River” campaign in which OFAH volunteers will be wearing marked T-shirts and monitoring angler activity.
The fall salmon run, says Holloway Wadhwani, is about more than just fishing. “It’s so spectacular just to watch. It brings out a lot of people who are not fishermen.”
With new rules in the offing it’s uncertain what the Ganaraska fall fishery will look like in the future, although it appears likely some combination of restrictions to angling and greater enforcement will bring relief to public complaints about activities associated with the run. What is certain is that the salmon are back, and in greater numbers than ever.
Run, salmon, run.
​Norm Wagenaar
​Published by Watershed Magazine - Fall 2024

COLD SPRINGS, ONTARIO - One of the principles of ecology – the study of the relationships between living organisms – is that everything is connected. At Evermeadow Farm, Josh Noiseux and Janita Wiersma are applying that principle to food production as they work on making a living from a small farm while improving the quality of its soils.
 
Their approach is known as regenerative farming, which is perhaps best understood in contrast to the more conventional modes of farming that produce the bulk of Canada’s food. Conventional farming, broadly stated, treats the soil as a growing medium fed with nutrients often brought from off the farm, typically in the form of chemical fertilizer. It’s an efficient way to produce food, but it can result in depleted soils and fewer insects, birds, and animals as farms grow in scale and eliminate wildlife habitat.
 
Regenerative farming seeks to reverse those impacts by understanding the characteristics of the lands being farmed and integrating them in a plan which not only produces food but benefits soils and biodiversity. The focus is on actively building organic matter in the soil and preventing erosion through rotational grazing, animal-based fertilization, perennial crops, and water management.
Josh and Janita started their farm in 2020. Josh had been working on a PhD in Buddhist ecological philosophy but put his studies on hold when he realized land management could be a place to put philosophy into practice. At the time he was studying the Buddhist concept of dependent arising – that everything depends upon multiple causes and conditions, and nothing exists as a singular, independent entity.  “It sounded pretty resonant to ecology,” he says. When the pandemic came, “we decided we needed to put this into action.” He and Janita were fortunate her parents owned land in the Cold Springs area they could lease “to provide a pathway to get into the driver’s seat as quickly as possible. They’re (Janita’s parents) really supportive of us, which is lucky too,” says Josh.
 
One of their first tasks on the farm, which had been previously planted in alfalfa and orchard grass, was to do baseline measurements of soil quality, forage yields and plant diversity so they could follow and understand the impacts of regenerative farming over time.
 
Rather than harvest hay as previous tenants had done, Josh and Janita introduced sheep, pigs, broiler chickens and laying hens to the property, each having a specific role in improving soil quality while providing saleable farm products.
 
“Each individual species has its own suite of characteristics,” says Josh Noiseux. “Our hens scratch up compacted soil and spread seed and fertile manure. Our sheep manage the grass, distribute nutrients, and build soil. Our pigs recycle waste nutrients and disturb the soil to prepare for re-seeding pastures, and our broiler chickens bring fertility into the farm as they move daily across the landscape.”
 
“For me the main thing is scientific ecology,” says Josh, who sees regenerative farming as a marriage of conservation and food production. “Humans are part of the landscape and humans manage the landscape. You can’t silo conservation.”
 
Evermeadow began on a small scale, farming 15 acres. Now, with three years of experience, Josh and Janita, are looking forward to 2023, when their 45-acre operation will include 75 to 80 sheep, 60 hogs, and 3,000 chickens, licenced under the Chicken Farmers of Ontario Artisanal Chicken program. They’re also installing an egg grading station so eggs produced on the farm, and by neighbourhood producers, can sell under the Evermeadow brand.  “It’s certainly cooking along,” comments Josh Noiseux. Products sold on the Evermeadow website include cuts of heritage pork, a variety of sausages, grass-fed lamb and pasture-raised chicken.
 
And in a just a few seasons Evermeadow is experiencing the on-the-ground benefits of regenerative farming. “It’s shocking to me how fast it’s working,” says Josh, noting “huge improvements in the composition of plants” on what had been a “really degraded hayfield.” They’re now seeing a greater diversity of native and naturalized flowers, more insects, and more swallows. Evermeadow is located not far from the Rice Lake plains, an area which would have been tallgrass prairie prior to European settlement. Plans for the future include restoring some of the natural features of tallgrass prairie savannah by planting native trees and grasses.
 
 
“We conceive of the farm as a habitat, not just for our domestic species, but also for any number of wild, feral, volunteer, and visitor species,” says Josh Noiseux. “We view our role as facilitators, helping to make more room for all of these creatures to co-habit in the landscape. Through our management choices, like not tilling, maintaining perennial pastures, planting trees and shrubs, and encouraging the return of native species, we make space for more life, which in turn makes space for even more life.”
 
Still, challenges remain, including one known to small farmers of all description – making a living. While Josh and Janita maintain lofty goals for regenerative farming at Evermeadow, they also know that long-term sustainability requires a healthy bottom line.
 
That bottom line includes paying fair wages to employees. “We don't do it alone, we have one full time employee and a few part-time staff,” says Josh Noiseux.  “We are a committed living wage employer, and have never used free or underpaid labour or internships as part of our staffing model. We see this as integral to our mutually beneficial participation in our local community.”
 
Currently the farm operates as a break-even proposition, with hopes of achieving profitability next year. “The key lesson we’ve learned is the extent to which small farms depend on outside income,” says Josh. At Evermeadow, strategies to achieve profitability on the farm include ramping up lamb and pork production and continuing children’s programs and adult workshops on farm ecology begun last year. Josh is also consulting for other land owners, providing them with plans that meet their ecological and financial goals.
 
A challenge specific to regenerative farming is that some of its benefits, such as improved soil quality and biodiversity, don’t lend themselves to being included on a statement of profits and losses. Josh says Evermeadow is working with a professor at Ivey Business School of the University of Western Ontario to create ways of measuring those benefits. They’re also looking at how farmers might be compensated for the improvements they make to ecology.  One example of this is ALUS (Alternative Land Use Services), a non-profit program that supports Canadian farmers who maintain and enhance ecological services on their lands.
 
“We’re not at all conventional farmers,” comments Josh Noiseux. But he doesn’t want Evermeadow’s endeavours to be seen as a critique of current agriculture practices. Instead, he’d like regenerative farming to be regarded as an approach  with benefits for all kinds of agriculture. “We’re part of the bigger farming community,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of support from the farming community.”
 
 
 

​ “Look, over there.”Bill pulled the green conservation authority pickup onto the shoulder, stopped on the concession road. A farmer we were to meet was a no-show; we are killing time, happier in the cold truck cab than back at the office.I peer over the frozen corn stubble, past the fence posts half sunk in snow, into the gray light by the hydro lines maybe 300 yards off.
Nothing, at first. Then a shimmer begins resolving itself, a horizontal whirl of specks, fluid, flying, lighting on the ground, taking off, landing again, guided by its own rhythm and purpose.
“Snow buntings,” Bill informs me.
They are winter birds, migrating from the Arctic in the coldest months. I’d never seen them before. A half-smile crosses Bill’s face.
Another day, hot summer. Ken and I are walking under hydro transmission towers searching for eastern tallgrass prairie plants – big bluestem, Labrador tea, butterfly milkweed – but  mostly eating wild strawberries, which Ken is uncannily skilled at finding. He stops at a pile of wood chips.
“There’s a red-bellied snake here.” Ken prods the pile with his boot, separates a few chips with his hand, reaches down.
“Oh, hello” – as if the snake had called with an invitation.
He picks up the small snake carefully with his fingers, lets it writhe for a few seconds, lays it gently back on the ground. The encounter is small stuff to Ken, a herpetologist. I stare as though he’d conjured the snake from the soil itself.
I spent time with Ken and Bill when I had this great job sending letters and making phone calls to landowners on the Oak Ridges Moraine, the long, glacier-formed ridge of sand and gravel that snakes through south Ontario, soaking up rain like a sponge to fill wells and feed streams.
I was paid to sell the idea that planting trees and keeping cattle out of the moraine’s creeks would be good stewardship for the aquifer. When people were interested, I visited. Experts like Ken and Bill added real value with their insights on invasive species, tree planting, bird identification, whatever. I listened and learned.
I learned a forester knows not only the names and ages of the trees, and whether they should be harvested or left to grow, but can tell if cattle grazed the woods two decades previously. A forester can read land like a book, will look at a massive oak with sprawling limbs in the midst of the woods and tell you that, a century ago, this was all open pasture.
And I learned that a good birder knows species by their voices even when some of them – grey catbirds, brown thrashers – mimic other birds. They listen – is it the “sweet sweet I’m so sweet” of the common yellow warbler or the “see-it see-it see-it, titititi” of the less widespread Nashville warbler? Hear it? There is a difference.
The biologists, ecologists, environmental technicians would come back to the conservation centre from the field, meet with coffee behind the workshop.
“See anything?”
Someone might recount spotting a red-headed woodpecker – a rare site these days – perched on a fence-post. Then someone else might counter with a long story about a red squirrel’s epic and futile struggle to escape a hunting weasel. There was a measure of one-upmanship in the storytelling.
A neophyte, I was careful with my offerings, limited them to what I thought I was certain of – the first sight of buffleheads swooping over broken ice, the distinct ‘turkey’s foot’ of fully ripened bluestem by a roadside, a pileated woodpecker, impossible to miss, hammering at a rotted tree trunk.
Still, even in my early days of encountering “the others” – author Farley Mowat’s collective name for the animals with whom we share this planet – I quickly learned the more you look the more you’ll see.
Awareness is everything. Read a two-inch story in your local newspaper about a winter outbreak of great gray owls and, next thing, one of the darned things will startle you as you drive, a huge bird swooping directly across your car window.
Discovery requires only an afternoon sitting quietly in the corner of a field. Make it early summer; pack a lunch. A bobolink will call, its song leads you to the top of a gnarled soft maple and you will see his yellow-crested head. His liquid bubbling music fills the air. An osprey flies towards its nest, long sticks on a platform mounted at the top of a telephone pole. Look closely. There’s a fish in her claws. She points her catch fore and aft for aerodynamics, like a torpedo. A fox happens by, just yards from your feet. You are both equally startled. She gives you a quick appraisal. Harmless. She carries on across the field, a mouse clenched between her teeth for her kits.
In his book on Haitian voodoo, The Serpent and the Rainbow, ethnobotanist Wade Davis writes how humans have lost the ability to see the planet Venus in daylight even though, in theory, it continues to reflect sufficient sunlight to be a navigational tool, just like ancient days. His hypothesis is that we access one world view and close others, leaving behind some secrets hidden in plain sight.
This insight came home to me in, of all places, a junkyard where I was looking for a taillight lens for my ancient Subaru station wagon. I realized that although I struggled to identify the trees, woody shrubs and grasses on the properties I visited, I could easily sight up and down the flattened car carcasses and rhyme off every car’s maker, from clues as subtle as hubcaps, grills, and rear-end stylings. A lifetime of exposure to automobile culture had permeated my awareness.
A couple of years pass. I’d done my moraine work, said goodbye to Bill and Ken. I connect the dots – between taillight lenses, climate change and the loss of species, red-bellied snakes hiding under wood chips.
What is revelation to me is that our minds have limited capacity to hold more than one world view. It is time to replace those auto hupcaps in our mind with buffleheads and hunting weasels, to read the woods like a forester, discern the difference between yellow and Nashville warblers. Our environmentalism needs baseline knowledge of the earth’s natural systems. Without it, how can we measure the small victories?
I propose a new start. We return to that afternoon in the corner of the field. You are expecting nothing. A bobolink lands on a branch, starts his liquid melody. A fox happens by, bringing home a meal for her kits. She decides you are harmless and passes close.
It does not remove an ounce of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plant a tree, or resolve Venus. But I can recognize a swirl of snow buntings across a gray winter field, and that’s a start.