My dog, Wilbur, and I had
been for a walk after supper.
I opened the gate, stepping
into the back yard. It was a dark night and quiet. And I heard the call: who
cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? It
was a Barred Owl in woods nearby. Wilbur and I stood still and listened.
Eventually it moved off, the call more faint, then gone.
The Barred Owl is a
non-migratory species, preferring old woodland habitat near water. Nesting,
they lay their eggs in the cavities of standing trees.[i]
I rarely hear them. Far more,
lying in bed at night in February or early March—if I happen to be awake—I hear
the breeding call of the Great Horned Owl, the classic hoot owl of children’s
storybooks.
For the last twenty-three
years, Sukie and I have lived in Cumberland Foreside, in what had been an old
summer colony, now a year round community.
Three years ago, we installed
functioning central heating in our drafty cottage built in 1920. Our
neighborhood, Wildwood, adjoins the Payson estate of one hundred acres of woods
and fields and waterfront along Broad Cove.
A thousand years ago and
more, the land, like much of the land and islands in Casco Bay, was frequented
by the ancestors of the Wabanaki tribe, leaving their tell-tales signs of
seasonal migrations in the shell middens and other artifacts they left behind.
In the mid-nineteenth
century, the Town of Cumberland built a poor farm on what is now the Payson
estate, where indigent residents would make oakum, a loose fiber obtained by
untwisting old rope, and used in caulking the wooden ships built in the Spear’s
Shipyard nearby.[ii]
Phillips Payson bought the
land in 1936 from property then owned by his wife’s parents. In 1938, he built
the estate house overlooking the bay beyond.
When we moved to Cumberland,
the matriarch, Mrs. Marion Payson, then in her nineties, was generous toward
the Wildwood children, allowing them to tramp through the forest and sled down
a long hill through the snowy woods into a field below.
For many years, I’ve keep
notes in our family calendar that hangs in the kitchen, writing down when the
migratory birds return to the Payson woods, their telltale songs delighting us
anew every spring.
Warblers
abound—Black-throated green, Chesnut-sided, Yellow-rumped, Ovenbird and many
others. The Hermit Thrush sings its wild sweet strains from woods beside vernal
pools, where the peepers hold forth on spring evenings. And year round the
cackling call of the Pileated Woodpecker, the massive bird that sometimes
visits the suet feeder hanging from the white pine in my backyard.
Mrs. Payson died many years
ago, leaving the property to her daughter, who in turn passed it on to her
children. The grand house on the bluff overlooking the cove stood empty more
often than not, too expensive to maintain, the property taxes prohibitive. The
caretaker was let go by the family, and inevitably, the estate was put up for
sale and was bought by a local developer last spring.
Plans have been drawn up for
seven building lots for high-end homes on a parcel of the property. The Town of
Cumberland hopes to purchase the remainder of the land from the developer,
making available walking trails and waterfront access for town residents. The
Paysons donated a conservation easement to the local land trust, although the
interpretation of that easement is presently in dispute.
Whatever the outcome, the
land will inevitably change. And with that change will come loss.
The house lots alone will
mean the degradation of acres of prime woodland habitat. Many of the bird
species I mentioned may disappear—far fewer warblers may nest there, the
numbers of owls and Pileated woodpeckers, depending on stands of dead timber
for nesting, will surely diminish. The Hermit Thrush may pass through on its
way to forests further north, but it will no longer dwell in the woods.
If Cumberland does purchase
the remainder of the property, it will be a mixed blessing—town residents,
while obtaining waterfront access, will enjoy only a fraction of the land’s
former glory.
While the story of the Payson
property is unique, throughout the country land is threatened by unrelenting
pressure from development and large-scale agriculture. By far the greatest
threat to bird species is the loss and degradation of habitat. The ongoing loss
of our intimate connection to the earth and its creatures, sustaining of the
human soul from time immemorial, is itself incalculable.
For we are not only the
stewards of God’s creation—tenders of the earth’s garden—we are part and parcel
of the fabric of life itself, in which we, and all creatures, live and move and
have our being.
In an article entitled Saving
our Birds in the New York Times last
month, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, John Fitzpatrick, on the
occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the death of the last passenger
pigeon, Martha, writes of the passing of an entire species:
Possibly the most abundant
bird ever to have existed, he says,
this gregarious pigeon once migrated in giant flocks that sometimes exceeded
three billion, darkening the skies over eastern North America for days at a
time...100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in a cage
at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close
attention today.
Mercilessly slaughtered by
the tens of millions at breeding colonies in the North and at huge wintertime
roosts in the South during the post-Civil War era, passenger pigeons were
shipped by trainloads to dinner tables in homes and restaurants across the
East. Their population fell from biblical numbers at mid-century to tiny,
aimless flocks in 1890. By around 1900 the few birds that remained were all in
captivity. The last male died in 1910, leaving Martha as a barren relic of past
abundance.
We need to imagine Martha
asking us, “Have you learned anything from my passing?”[iii]
Fitzpatrick cites the 2014
State of the Birds report, a periodic assessment of the health of our nation’s
bird populations compiled by leading bird conservationists, that notes 230
species on a watch list of birds that are currently in danger of extinction or
at risk of becoming so without significant conservation efforts.
But then he goes on to remark
on the pioneering conservation work of many, such as President Theodore
Roosevelt, and the huge difference that such initiatives have made. We need to
redouble our commitment and investment even now, Fitzpatrick asserts, insuring
that our great-grandchildren will continue to hear the birds calling from the
woods, just as I have heard the owl and thrush from my own backyard.
Aldo Leopold, the author of
the great conservation classic, A Sand County Almanac, wrote: We only grieve for what we know.
Leopold was commenting on the
increasing rarity of a once abundant species of prairie wildflower in his home
state of Wisconsin. How could this beautiful plant have come so dangerously
close to extinction, he wondered? Why did its impending disappearance from the
world not provoke a stronger response?[iv]
Leopold would suggest that
our ability to mourn the loss of species and entire ecosystems is itself a
reflection of the ties of kinship that bind us to the lives of other beings. We
only grieve for what we know.
I grieve for the impending
loss of nearby woods and the banishment of birds that have enriched my life,
and that of my children, for years.
Our grief at the degrading of
the natural world, though, is a sure sign of our affection and tenderness
toward all creation, and of an underlying joyous affirmation of life.
It is the doorway to renewed
action and the healing of the world.
And in that, we take hope and
even greater consolation. AMEN
* A Sermon Preached at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Scarborough; First Sunday of Creation Season; September 14, 2014
Photo: Farm owned by Maria Dalton, worked by the Cram family, late 19th cent., on land that became the Payson estate. Courtesy of Thomas Bennett, Prince Memorial Library, Cumberland, ME.
[i] Cornell Lab
of Ornithology All About Birds http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/barred_owl/id
[ii] see
Bennett, Thomas Maine’s Pauper Laws and the Cumberland Overseers of the Poor
http://cny.mainememory.net/page/2019/display.html
[iii]
Fitzpatrick, John Saving the Birds New
York Times August 31, 2014
[iv] Christie,
Douglas E. The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology Oxford University Press 2013
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