6:51 a.m. 55 degrees, wind SW 2 mph. Sky: dawn thick and overcast, a remnant of a half-hearted rain; sunrise almost indistinguishable from dawn, a disarrangement of gray with the thrill of a passing red-tailed hawk. Permanent and intermittent streams: volume and volume a xerox of yesterday. Wetlands: the green thread of tall reeds that marked the main channel now a brunette in the buff-colored marsh; sweet gale islands, where deer birthed and redwings nested, now dark-chocolate. Alders drop leaves, while chickadee harvests seeds from tiny cones. Pond: four mergansers linger for a moment—two juvenile males, two females—swimming in tight circles, then skitter across the surface and flush, flying low over the alders before pitching into the marsh; a sudden departure that agitates the surface.
Aspen leaves littered the road, unmarred bright yellow, or the color of overheated butter. Stammering crickets, a throwback to September. Many robins have moved on, but voluble blue jays and nuthatches make up for their absence, chattering, tooting, screaming, as though on holiday.
The word topophilia means "love of place," a complex, multilayered emotion that the poems of Mary Oliver and the essays of Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey awaken without ever mentioning the word. Landscape memories involve a jubilee of sights and sounds, smells and textures of bygone days, which, in my case, are lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer on the beach. I grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, a bike ride from the salt marsh, kept wet by the tides, and from the Jones Beach, a skinny, barrier island—seventeen miles of dunes, swales, and the eternally pounding surf. For me, going to Jones Beach meant seeing birds, all sorts of birds from the four corners of North America.
One species stood out from all the rest. The marsh hawk (aka northern harrier) was the first raptor I'd identified on my own, long-winged and slender. Sexually dimorphic. Males, smaller than females, are pewter-colored above, white below, with dark wingtips, as though dipped in ink. Females are mud brown and streak-chested; juveniles have a rosy blush on their chest. Light and buoyant as kites, marsh hawks coursed endlessly and effortlessly over the salt marsh, wings held in a shallow "V." A long, steerage tail fine-tuned flight. On any given trip to Jone Beach, I'd spot five or six, maybe more.
Unfortunately, climate change triggered higher tides and more frequent flooding, which greatly reduced the number of marsh hawks still inhabiting Jones Beach since the ubiquitous and marsh-loving meadow voles, their principal source of food, have been pushed inland by the rising sea. Now, whenever I return to Jones Beach, a once visible and visceral connection to my boyhood has become noticeably scarce; it's absence a frayed strand in the fabric of memories that tether me to my coastal roots—daydreams of green-plumed marshes and snow-white clouds, of bare-foot, carefree summer days when time seemed to stand still. Of ambitious hawks that drift with purpose.
My boys grew up here in Coyote Hollow. Back then, Color peaked the third week in September, and snow arrived in November; peepers filled the marsh in late April and stayed through July. A robin or a bluebird in winter was a big deal. In late fall, evening grosbeaks arrived in the front yard, some stayed for the winter. Almost every year, we'd see a moose. We never saw opossums. Cardinals and red-bellied woodpeckers stayed closer to the Connecticut River.
One vehicle I use to track Vermont's new weather patterns, grimly fascinating and wretchedly unpredictable, is the appearance or absence of dooryard birds. Simple enough. I just watch my feeders. Of course, I could check a weather app, but as Dylan noted, You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Birds are my malleable window into an evolving climate and an emasculated landscape.
October 23, 2020. Mid-sixties. I haven't filled my wood stove for two days.
We are the steward of our childhood memories, and climate change and environmental degradation have begun to exact a toll, a displacement of sources that bonded to our childhoods, a loss rarely spoke of.