March, Northeastern Oregon

Published in Northwest

and in Home Educators’s Family Times

            The meadows still lie under two feet of snow, and the temperature drops well below zero most nights, but the birds don't let this appearance of winter convince them it isn't spring.

            They startle me. One clear night when it was 14 degrees below zero, I heard the insistent call of a killdeer and thought the bird was far too early. Surely it would freeze. But two days later, four of them were calling and wheeling about above the snow. Red-winged blackbirds flew into the willow bushes and sang their fluid, running-water sounds of early spring.

            The first Canada geese also came at night. At six degrees below zero, they flew up and down the valley, calling.

            A hundred yards below the house, a seep spreads water over a wide, marshy area on its way to the river. The warmth of the water has melted the snow. Grass has sent up green shoots. The willows have started to bud.

            More than a dozen seeps surround the edge of the meadow. The birds make their living in these melted-off areas until the meadow clears of snow.

            A robin perched in the willows this morning, and two geese stood face to face on the snow by the seep, honking at each other as if each thought the other hard of hearing. It is the pair that nests close, somewhere this side of the river.

            My daughters and I stood by the back of the shop and watched them. They know we're there, but for six years we've been careful not to intrude, and they trust us enough to allow us within 50 yards and still go on with their living.

            If I read the book right, these are branta canadensis moffitti, the largest Canada geese. They flew up the meadow and back. One banked and landed on the peak of the barn roof. The other circled once and let down for a landing. Something went wrong, and the bird didn't stop on the peak of the roof. It started sliding down the metal roof, wings spread, feet backpedaling. The scrape, scrape sound of its feet on metal picked up tempo, faster and faster as it slid at increasing speed down the long roof, trying to brake while it talked to the roof-stander about what was happening. The goose honked and took to the air just as it plummeted over the eave and the snow piled under it. It skimmed above the snow and circled back for another try, a good landing that time.

            The sandhill cranes will arrive any day now. They will fly over the house, calling, that impossible-to-describe trumpeting that is so loud that we hear them when they are more than a mile up the valley. Their wings span seven feet, and they stand about five feet tall. Sometimes they land on the meadow between the house and the river.

            We will feel honored if we have the opportunity to see some of their long-legged, long-necked courtship dance, as we did last year. They are wary birds. When they land close, keeping them close requires either staying in the house or staying inconspicuously near the buildings. We stay away from their nesting ground because we read they might abandon their nest if they're disturbed near it.

            A flight of geese honked its way down the valley above Camp Creek today, then flew up the Burnt River Valley, looking over that stream part-way up Greenhorn and then turned without landing and headed back, dark forms against the sky. Juniper asked, "Why is the sky so brown?"

            "Smog."

            "How would we have smog here?"

            "Well, the highway's right here. County roads. Logging roads, chain saws, all the machinery when we hay. And the smog over industrial areas doesn't just stay there. It spreads around the world."

            Amanda said, "It isn't good for the geese to fly through that, is it?"

            Juniper said, "Where else can they fly?"

            "Why don't they just stop it? It isn't necessary."

            Their suggested solution for all the environmental problems is simple: "If it causes damage, don't do it. Find another way to get what you need."

            I talked about the complexities of our economic, legal, political, religious and cultural structures. I made a case that implementing their solution would require a difficult and basic change in civilization's approach to the Earth. But I agreed with my daughters that all mankind's needs could be met in peaceful community with all Earth's life forms. The techniques, the tools, the knowledge, already are part of the culture.

            After the explanation of the way the world works, they returned me to our starting point. Amanda said, "I know all that, or a lot of it anyway. All I know is, if it can be stopped, then it should be stopped."

            Juniper said, "It must be stopped. What will happen to the world by the time we're grown up? If we decide to have children, what of nature, of the world, will there be left for them to exist in peaceful community with?

            She asks to express her wonder. My daughters know I can't answer those questions. We live as clean an existence as we can. When we see something we can do that will help, we do it, even if it's only picking up trash by the road or supporting an organization that helps animals, or limiting our use of machinery and energy.

            We are caretakers of this 1,200 acre ranch we live on. I irrigate the meadows, and we harvest a crop of wild meadow hay in the summer. Irrigation makes the meadow an ideal habitat for marsh dwellers and for those creatures that dwell on the edges of the marsh. Hay-harvesting, barbed-wire fences, too many cattle in the forests and meadows-- these are not good for the habitat, but still, the major thrust of what we do for a living is not destructive to the Earth or to the habitat of the wild animals all around us.

            We expect everyone else to understand that we are to be benevolent, intelligent caretakers of the Earth, to overcome the desire for material accumulation beyond need and inordinate power over others and to get on with the job. As Amanda says, with upturned palms and raised shoulders, "How many worlds are there? Just this one, right?"

            This afternoon, a female cinnamon teal duck paddles about in a pool in the marshy ground below where we're standing and talking, while a mallard quacks and flies down the valley, close above the river.

            "Look, a meadowlark," says one of my daughters. They come late, as do the mountain bluebirds. I never know when the great blue herons arrive. When drying ground and the falling river permit me to get across the meadow, they will be there, already nesting in the tallest lodgepole trees at the edge of the timber.

            When the swallows, busiest of them all, come back and build their mud nests in the barn and under the eaves of other buildings, we'll know they all are here; phalaropes, snipes, all the ducks and geese, all the small birds that hide in the growing grasses and are seen only rarely.

            I have fewer opportunities to bring about change than I would like to have. I see less progress toward humankind fulfilling the responsibility of caretaker of the Earth than I would like to see.

            I look again at the wild birds and again at my children. There may be no guarantee that everything always will be in balance, but they go on with their daily living. They don't hesitate to invest their entire energy in the good that is the life force, day by day.

   The river is high in its banks, and it's time to go check some of the ditches. I pick up my shovel and address my daughters, "Let's go see what we can find by sloshing around in the melting snow on the meadow."