This article appears in the Summer 2026 issue
Four o’clock a.m., June 21, 1974. Morning came despite the darkness. The river was placid before dawn, a glass sheet cut by the bow of my canoe. Slap and drip, slap and drip. The rhythm of the paddle was soothing, the exertion of my muscles more calming still.
The world was starting to waken. Violet lines extended skyward into the black. Sounds began reaching my ears. They were those of rustling, driven by the first puffs of breeze across cattails. Water lapped against creek borders with a duller, softer sound than that of my paddles, and mud from the waning low tide crackled as air pushed from its pores. I noted the distant voices of birds growing louder with passing seconds, like an orchestra in anticipation of its conductor. Dawn approached, the baton lifted, and the crescendo began anew.
This composition bathed me like light, it washed over me as an ocean, and carried me to a place more perfect than I had known. It held me close, whispering truth, and joined me to where, it told me, I belonged. I wondered whether this music, as I thought of it, came from Earth only, or if it was older still. How should I judge from what I could know? Its presence showered me also in glittering golds, dancing from wavelets in freshening gusts. It became more dazzling than I could endure, piercing me through, and leaving me defenseless in its wake.
The music took me each morning and would not release me until its effects subsided in the advancing light. Motorboats and chainsaws diluted it, finally, until its last notes faded from my ears.
It was time to resume my role as student, to begin the day of science before me. I pulled up, tied off to a handful of cattails, and stepped onto the mud. How 6 a.m. could be upon me so quickly I could not fathom. One hundred fifty paces, stop, record. One hundred fifty paces, stop, record, with clipboard and pencil, the names of birds and the number of each I encountered—not easy paces, but slippery ones, through crumbling, aged, brown stalks cluttering a sea of young, green ones. With every step a face full of pollen greeted me when wands of maturing anthers slapped against my cheeks.
Alien faces appeared as well. Belligerent, grumbling wrens surrounded me, with angry eyes looking sideways from stems. They had been here so long, so very long, and who was I, the intruder, to be in their world? Blackbirds wheeling above showed less interest, and their message was different. It began the same, “This is our world,” but continued, “if you wish to be with us, you must be as we are. Shed your presumptions and be again like us.” It was a message I heard every day. I felt not so welcome here, but only permitted entry. I had concluded I must prove myself to inhabitants not easily convinced.
This day, however, as I entered their realm, I saw these creatures, known to so few, differently. I had endured every day with them, regardless of the conditions. I felt what they felt. I lived what they lived. They were becoming, grudgingly perhaps, if not friends then intimate acquaintances. I spent my time with them, not with humans. I knew their rhythms, their customs. I began wishing I could seek their long-accumulated wisdom, but I could not. Their sensibilities were beyond such concerns; they remained connected to something more. Still, their company was a comfort. It was they who I used as my solid foundation.
The morning was still cool, but my exertion from struggling through rows of cattails already had me beginning to perspire. Within a few more hours, I would be soaked through. Being so was not an unpleasant sensation, although it could leave me feeling weak by the end of the day. I always carried water with me, and sometimes I would drink, although more frequently I couldn’t be bothered with such mortal concerns.
It was rare for a day to pass without some new revelation. It could be recognition of a recurrent pattern, such as only when tidewater was deeper than my knees would certain species appear. Or it could be the chance discovery of a rarity, through which I could learn something still different about the nature of this system.
On this particular day, a rarity did appear: a skulking, difficult-to-see but loudly vocal yellow-breasted chat. Chats, I had learned, were once common in the region but had largely abandoned this northeastern portion of their range. The thickets they favored had over the past century matured into forest. Few tangled spots suitable for them remained. I sensed I was witnessing the last act in their unsung local drama. I realized as well that all surrounding me, despite the illusion of permanence was, in fact, not. The change was simply undetectable by my sensibilities. I would have to grow old to know such things.
Robert Craig is executive director of Bird Conservation Research, Inc., a Hadlyme, Connecticut-based research foundation, and research scientist at the Department of Natural Resources Management and the Environment, University of Connecticut.