Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [80]
“Let’s go,” Joel said. We all retreated quickly from the nest and walked toward camp. We stopped from time to time, checking the bird through binoculars. The loon had already slid into the small lake and was paddling around with her wings flapping uselessly.
In the coming months and years, the research would progress slowly. The transmitters revealed that the population of red-throated loons nesting on the Delta migrated down the West Coast of North America as far south as California. This information provided a critical clue, but it didn’t solve anything; it was a tiny prelude to the rest of a story whose end no one could predict.
A few weeks later, John and I headed home. On the flight out, as I looked from the floatplane for swan families on lakes, I realized that despite everything I couldn’t do and didn’t know, I felt adept as a witness to the Delta, which was in the midst of changes far beyond what the few research camps scattered across the region could measure. The calculations of cause were so complex. I dwelled in what I could see and record: a cache of ping-pong ball–like eggs under a piece of driftwood that was a short-eared owl’s nest; the white heads of emperor geese stained gold by iron in the mud; the way camp shrank from black dots on the horizon to nothing as I worked my way across the tundra. At home, I put the blue glass globe from the Japanese fishing net on the windowsill, where it gathered light. It was a token smuggled from another world, borrowed by me for a time. It was a reminder that a domain once claimed can be lost.
11
STAKING CLAIM
STEVEDORE: n. One who is employed in the loading or unloading of ships. v. To load or unload the cargo of a ship.
The property was perfect. It was six acres that abutted eighty acres of scattered spruce forest that were protected by law for moose habitat. A meadow ran across it, north to south, draped with grasses and thick with the fuchsia flowers of chest-high fireweed. At the far end of the meadow, the snow-capped peaks of the mountains across the bay rose up above the black tips of spruce. A stream slipped along the edge of the meadow. Running water on the property: This felt like a dream. There was nothing between the southern edge of the land and the bluff down to the beach except a mile and a half of spruce, the slice of Fritz Creek—as wide as a rural lane—and the kind of boggy habitat where we hoped wild cranberries grew. Standing on the property, you couldn’t hear the road. It was seven miles out of town to the east, in a microclimate that was generally warmer in the summer and colder in the winter than town. We liked that. It meant perfect gardening conditions—for the north, at least—and in winter, we’d get snow when town was getting rain. And the meadow collected sun for many hours during the summer days; we could tell this even at the end of August when we found the place and bought it.
The property had no water view. This was perfect too, we thought. It made the land much cheaper—less than some people paid for a new car. But just knowing that there were no houses, no roads, no telephone or electric lines between our place and the bay made us very happy.
We knew already which birds would pass through the place. In the fall, we would hear great horned owls and see hawk owls perched at the tops of our spruce. On winter days, we knew that chickadees would buzz through in small groups and dull red pine grosbeaks would gather in the trees. In the spring, we’d awaken to hermit thrushes and the three-note calls of golden-crowned sparrows and