Edgeworld: December

December at Banner Marsh.


This is the quiet season, a time for reflection and rest, for me anyway. I would like to think that the critters at Banner are hunkering down to successfully wait out the winter, but for a lot of them there is great uncertainty about survival. Food supplies run low in winter. Temperatures can drop fatally, especially for those who didn't migrate in time, lulled by an unseasonably warm fall. I'll use this quiet time to describe my explorations at the marsh, but my reflections will have an edginess born of the tension between my comfort and the life/death issues of those animals I observe facing winter in the wild.

It is easy for me to talk about the birds coming to the feeder in the back yard. Juncos, finches, cardinals, and even the occasional downy or flicker perch within a few feet of me, and I can observe what they eat, how they signal each other, their disputes, and their seed cracking techniques. I invade their privacy in comfort, behind the window, and they get free food. It seems to be a fair trade.

Watching animals at Banner is morally trickier. If you get lucky and see some real action, you can bring home a trophy picture, but what do the animals get in return? I feel a bit like a journalist must feel reporting a disaster. Do the requirements of journalistic objectivity prohibit helping the victims? What kind of help can you provide? I owe something to the marsh wildlife, source of so much joy for me. But inappropriate help (feeding etc.) might make them welfare dependents, as my feeder birds are at home.

The best I can come up with is to become an apologist for our local wild animals. Winter is a severe test for the animals that live in Banner year round, but it is nothing compared to the stresses of human activity on the natural world. This is not news. But it still surprises me to talk to neighbors who are unaware of the eagles on the river, the foxes in the neighborhood, the deer everywhere. So I propose to share the special adventures I have had at our local wetland as a kind of payment. Everyone who learns a little more about the wild magic on our doorstep could become an ally in preserving it.