The Swans After 100 years

The steam rises up from the little lake and hangs in the air as our cars pass over the bridge. This section of the lake is never closed, even during the coldest days of the winter. I notice a car parked at the side of the road, the driver standing by his door with his camera in his hand and I glance quickly to see what he is getting on his camera.  There, idling lazily are a dozen or two gorgeous swans, some with their heads tucked under the water, which is no doubt warmer than the air. 

Later when I come home, I look into a field where the farmer has left several rows of standing corn.

"The state pays those farmers to leave some corn up like that in order to prevent snowdrifts from coming across the fields and blocking the highway," Old Man tells me. 

But this spring day, there are fifty or so swans in the all-you-can eat buffet, gorging themselves like a bunch of old ladies at a luncheon.  I can't hear them, but I slow down to see their majestic forms lounging comfortably at the feast.

There were never swans in this area of the state when I was growing up. Hunters had wiped them out years earlier. Some time in my late teens, a state agency introduced pairs of them to see if they could be "broght back."  Now, 20 years later, they have emerged as a success story of reintroduction. 

Then some noise startles them, and they lift off, their long necks stretched out forever in front of their bulky bodies.  They are almost comical; these birds are definately more lovely when they are gliding in the water.  I catch my breath in amazement at the site, and slow down the car to watch as they begin their journey back to the water.

I wish I could thank the people responsible for considering these beauties worth the time to reintroduce into the wild here.  It's sheer eye candy to see them hang in the air, enjoying the home that they have come to love. It's so wonderful to know that man and beast can reside together in harmony. 

You would be amazed at how many new animals traipse around that were never here when I was a child.  Wolves have drifted back in, coyotes, and herds of deer. As a child, I rarely saw a deer, but in the early 1980's they came back so that today, hunters need to take out quite a few just to keep the population from crashing from starvation.  The only thing I wish would somehow rebound are the beautiful butterflies that I remember when growing up on the farm as a girl. That was before DDT, before the bugs all disappeared, before Rachel Carson called our attention to what we are doing to our earth.

Even the frogs have somehow recovered. At night you can hear them in the swamp, singing a symphony.  For the past few decades, we saw the strangest beasts materialize here: frogs with extra heads or legs. There were even years where the frog population was so small that scientists began to discuss whether we seriously would lose our frogs all together. Somehow they have endured, through luck and who-knows-what. 

The farmers haven't helped that much.  Planes still fly over the crops dumping Godknowswhat on our food.  Nearby, in the little town of Clitherall is a sign warning pregnant women not to drink the water.  All the run off from the local fields have cloudied the waters of local lakes.  The area has some of the highest rates of cancer in the U.S.  It's the bad side of farming, but people need to eat.

And yet the animals return. It's a miracle to know that a mountain lion has been spoted at a local state park.  An occasional moose plod through the area. How are these beasts making it while the pesticides and herbicides are changing their (and our) anvironment forever?  It's amazing, but it says something about our own existance in the future. If these creatures can endure through all of the changes here, then so shall we.  It is hope for the land in the world around us.