Listening for Loons

We were in Canada a couple weeks ago at a place we’ve enjoyed for 24 years: a small cabin on a remote river once used by the voyageurs. It had been a while since we were there during June. Spring was just getting a solid foothold and the warblers and kinglets and thrushes were singing their hearts out. We saw old friends— fringed polygala, wild lily of the valley, sarsaparilla, blue bead lily. We filled our lungs with the essence of spruce-fir, floated lazily downriver casting for pike, saw an impressive moose in a river tributary, watched eagles and beavers and snowshoe hares. The mosquitoes were in peak season, but they are as much a part of the June north woods as the voices of nesting songbirds.  The experience would be strangely different without them. 

They were days well spent, unplugged from electronic gadgetry, living simply, tuned into solitude. Time in the north never fails to inspire and offer perspective. It gives us a chance to recalibrate and consider what has changed and what needs to. 

An article appearing in Nature describes a peer reviewed study on the planet’s health. A team of scientists looked at eight key thresholds and concluded seven have already been breached. The areas measured were climate change, aerosols (air pollution), surface water, ground water, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphorus fertilizer, intact ecosystems, and the functional integrity of all ecosystems. Aerosols were the only category not breached, but the team warned that no amount of polluted air can be considered safe.

Within 20 years projected sales of electric cars are expected to surpass combustion engine vehicles. A Washington Post article indicates that electric cars “require six times the mineral input, by weight, of conventional cars.”  The minerals have to be extracted and processed which invariably results in harm to workers, communities, and the local environment. In a separate article published in The Guardian, carmaker Volvo claims greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are 70 percent higher than gasoline vehicles.  Both articles are irritating because neither mentions that upfront environmental costs in manufacturing EVs are readily offset by zero emissions over the car’s lifetime, especially when batteries are charged with renewable energy.  I love our electric car— roomy, peppy, economical to operate, almost zero maintenance. EVs are, at the moment, the most earth-friendly automobile option. 

We noticed as we reached the boreal forest on our drive north that our windshield became littered with smashed insects, something we no longer experience in the industrial heartland. The Indiana Economic Digest ran an article entitled Scientists, Advocates Decry Drastic Declines in Insect Populations in Indiana and Throughout the World.  In April of this year, a CNN report stated “between the climate crisis and high-intensity agriculture… insect abundance has already dropped by nearly 50%, while the number of species has been slashed by 27%.”  As I read the piece an ad popped up promoting a new and improved bug zapper guaranteed to make summer outdoor activities more enjoyable.  Seriously?

For the past several days we’ve smelled and looked through the haze of smoke from Canadian forest fires.  The air quality throughout the northeast and Midwest has been in the dangerous category, at times considered the most polluted in the world. It’s a record breaking year for fires across Canada with no end in sight as peak fire season approaches. 

A man that suffers a serious heart attack is likely to develop a sudden interest in the workings of the human heart.  In the same way, the health of the planet and the stream of ecological services that allow life to flourish will one day garner the respect and attention it deserves.  We need an epiphany before tipping points and feedback loops are fully engaged and everyone becomes grimly aware we waited too long. 

I turned 70 this year. There are some in my cohort who say our remaining decades are few and the environmental crisis is for the next generation to fix. Yet we’re responsible for the mess. We’ve spent our lifetimes supporting an economy powered by polluting energies and poisonous land use practices with little consideration of its uncertain end. We were warned early enough, but special interests and our own determination to carve out a slice of the American dream killed the messengers.  If anyone is obliged to make reparation it is the boomers, and we’re mostly dragging our feet. 

This morning a loon is calling on a celebrated waterway connecting James Bay to Lake Superior. The song is mournful and eerie and melancholic, and a sense of the wild and pristine is carried in it.  It’s a plea to review our priorities, an urge to slow down and look at how our living impacts the bedrock systems that support us. It’s a voice known to carry a long distance. Anyone listening can hear it.