by Don Miller
“There is another world, but it is in this one.” W.B. Yeats
There is a group of senior nature folks located in northern Illinois that call themselves, “The Whale Watchers.” They hike along this regions’ river banks, through forest and prairie, and in all of their 50 years of existence have never seen a whale. I was told by one of the veteran whale watchers, “If we see one we have to disband.” It is a good thing they have not found the Midwest pod. I suppose that coming up with a goose egg in the whale column is no surprise, but what they have seen while seeking the large cetaceans would fill 1,000 journals. So it is that when we are looking for one thing many other things can come into focus.
For instance, green flashes are a real phenomenon, not just a Hollywood stunt or something out of a novel. It can be seen at sunset usually over a large body of water, at the instant the sun slips into the liquid horizon line. If atmospheric conditions are just right, one can behold it. Many try but live a life time without viewing it. But what is the downside of coming up empty in the green flash? Watching a sunset and witnessing a great variety of sea or shore birds during that time? Much like the “seekers of whales” we don’t know what is out there unless we are looking with eyes wide open.
There are some phenomena that need no patience of a green flash detection. They are truly in your face, like this summer’s cicada invasion. Several billions of cicada nymphs suck sap from tree roots. However as adults they are like rock stars; they live fast and die young. They rise from the ground, buzz about for awhile, mate, lays eggs, and after three or four weeks their bodies litter the forest floor. The females lay 400-600 eggs in as many as 40-50 different nests before they die. Those billions of young crawl down the trees and go to their root cellars for another 17 years. All that miracle and mystery there even for the non-observer.
While rounding a bend during a float on the Sugar River, a friend and I startled off a great blue heron from its perch in the skeletal remains of a cottonwood tree. As we watched its ancient flight I thought of a fellow paddler’s comment from a previous similar sighting, “Are we not lucky to live in a time to see this awesome bird alive and not in a book of extinct animals.” I hardly had time to finish my thought when my canoe partner and I saw that a primary wing feather had somehow released itself from the great blue. We watched as it glided effortlessly in a suspended spiral patiently down to the water surface. It landed as soft as one lays a baby in a crib. We caught up with it in our canoe and glided parallel for a while, observing how it just rode the river’s surface much the same as we were. We pulled it into the canoe to examine the perfect feather more closely. Not a mark, fold or bend, speck of dirt or dust, nothing but a beautiful shine of blue-grey, held together by a bone-white shaft. After the final examination we asked each other what we would do with it. I ask you, what would you do?
Several years ago while canoeing during the evening hours on the Kishwaukee River with author/ butterfly expert Bob Pyle, we came upon a large group of fireflies or lightning bugs. There were hundreds of the flash dancers all around. They escorted us down the river, growing brighter as the darkness of the night grew thicker. Bob being from the Northwest where this phenomenon doesn’t occur asked, “You don’t ever take this for granted do you?” I answered, “No”, but now that I am writing it makes me think…
I wonder why some people can lay with their backs to the land at midnight and stare endlessly at the immense sky, while others never even look up. And I wonder why some only look at the moon, while others see the stars, planets, galaxies, and universes beyond? Non-observers, observers and seekers.
There is an inner eye that interconnects us with the greater things that are going on. We all enter into nature through different doors, some birding, others hiking, some canoeing and so forth. There is so much sensual depth to what we can experience and perceive. We need to open our “lenses” to see all that is there. I thought of this while enjoying a baseball game on TV between the Cubs and the Giants. I was watching Barry Bonds bat, when I saw in the stands behind homeplate what I thought was one of our Severson Dells board members. The camera was straight on Bonds, but I was observing the action behind the main character. I watched the proceedings going on beyond the focus of camera lens that was pointed at the batter. Two cell phone users were busily chatting with unknown listeners; there was one messy cotton-candy eater, and some clown with glaring red nose from too much sun that actually was wearing a Giant’s hat in Wrigley Field. Others were talking, some laughing, and a few actually had an eye on Bonds at bat. All that interaction and activity beyond the attention of the camera. Sometimes the real mystery and story is going on outside the spotlight.
My epiphany of “behind the scenes” came not through the background of a baseball game, but through plants. Soil types never excited me and I didn’t pay much attention to the geology of the land. Being a “plant guy” I didn’t look much further than the secret life of plants. I finally realized that where plants grew depended on the soil and its moisture and its make-up and all the other physical characters of the area. And plants determine what insects may survive in that habitat, and what birds feed there on that insect, and so on. It takes an inner eye and more than a causal look-see to interconnect to see the whole, to look further than the obvious.
We see and hear through our two eyes and ears, whether it is a green flash, the buzz of insects, or a heron feather floating from the heavens. However, to perceive these, to appreciate and understand them, one has to have an inner eye. One that recognizes the mysteries and miracles that are found within them when these observations are made. Is this inner eye a result of genetics, a learned skill, prior experiences or some unknown quality? No matter, the eye rests on a pivot post on an internal gate that opens one way for one to see the frenzy of self-destructive behavior towards the Earth and its inhabitants. Then when all that darkness feels to be completely enveloping oneself, the gate swings to show one the blue on a bluebirds back that the midday light is holding captive. Or it takes you to the woods and the smiles and laughter of grandparents with grandkids on a walk. So great are the everyday mysteries and miracles of nature.
Is this the world Yeats writes of?
