In the Fog

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.  
-- Anne Sexton

The fog hung thickly around me as I walked a road through woods near my home early in the morning on the first day of spring. The air was cool and moist on a day that promised to rise into the mid 70s, even though we are still in the middle of March. 

Morning fog (Margo D. Beller)

The fog grayed out everything including the still-bare trees, the shrubs and grasses starting to go green. It obscured the street lights from the nearby food pantry and the cars that were invisible until nearly upon me.

Birds seem different in the fog. Their calls and songs seem louder. I walked and heard a Carolina wren, a little bird with a big song. I stopped to look up and there it was, a small, dark shape on a high branch. It was not perturbed by the fog. Its instinct says it is time to announce its breeding territory. This bird was not alone. By the time I got home an hour later I heard at least five Carolina wrens as well as a number of other birds including fish crows, cardinals and a few robins.

There was no one at the dog park. Is it the early hour - just after dawn - or the fog that has kept people and their pets away? Or something else? I wondered. There were few cars driving this road, too. I had my solitude but had to walk quickly because I didn't have much time before I had to start work.

It was 7:15 on a Friday morning in the age of COVID-19.

Normally, the road and the dog park would be busier. Early on, the few people I saw during my walk either traveled in a different direction or, if we passed each other, rigorously stayed on the other side of the street to give us "social distance." If we made eye contact we smiled or nodded our heads. One man gave me a little wave. On the way home the runners came out, most staying in the street but a few were on the sidewalk. I gave those a wide berth.

(Margo D. Beller)

This is a dangerous and uncertain time. MH has been ill and the day before this walk I had begun feeling strange, perhaps unwell. To me this felt like a cold. The common cold is caused by a coronavirus, after all. But THIS one, COVID-19, is a different beast. Too much computer work gives me a headache. Is this what caused today's. The weather has been cold and damp. Is that why I can't feel warm? I haven't the foggiest idea.

MH, in that scientific manner of his, reasons he has a mild form of COVID-19. He has stayed home and rests in the guest room. He reasons the flu shot we had in October is helping his immune system fight this virus, and I hope that is the case for both of us. 

I am taking the attitude of an old friend, who said his way of dealing with illness is to ignore it. Unfortunately, it is hard to do when the news seems to be nothing but this virus, how nations are reacting to limit its spread and how many have died. Those of us with mild symptoms are told to stay home and avoid emergency rooms, and I am more than happy to do that. I am lucky I can work from home and continue to be paid. Many, many others can't stay home because of the nature of their jobs or because if they don't work they don't get paid. I was in that situation until a few months ago.

The morning fog lingered into afternoon as the temperature rose and children who have been blocked from school, sporting events and even gathering in town parks kept their playing to their yards or took walks or bike rides with their parents along my side street. I could see and hear them through my open office window. I don't blame them. I need to get out or go crazy, too. 

Overnight it rained, the fog lifted and the temperature fell to a more seasonable level. The birds were waiting for me this dawn to come out with the feeders, particularly the male cardinal that flies to a nearby bush as I hang them and then rushes to eat at the house-shaped feeder when I am back on the porch.

Empty dog park, streetlight through the trees (Margo D. Beller)

This Saturday morning I waited for the sun to break through the clouds as I  watched him and the other birds. At one point I heard a hairy woodpecker, an uncommon and skittish visitor. One appeared at the suet to eat but I kept hearing the call coming from another direction. Then she flew off and the male appeared. A pair! I'm supporting a breeding pair of hairy woodpeckers! I am protective of hairys. I rarely see them except at the suet feeder. This is why I put out suet, I thought.

This is why I feed birds.

Life goes on, these hairy woodpeckers were telling me. You might have your virus scaring the hell out of you but we have other things to concern us. We must mate, build a nest that is hidden and inaccessible - perhaps in one of these big trees in your yard - and create a family to carry on our species. Your feeder helps us, yes, but if wasn't here we'd do what we always do and find food to survive.

We all have to survive, I agreed as I watched these birds with tears in my eyes. I hope we all do.

Call Me Restless

(Margo D. Beller)

(Editor's note: This post was published several years ago, one of many posts where I stupidly removed the link allowing you, Dear Reader, to access it after publication. So I have republished it.) 

When the dark comes early; when the cold wind blows; when the furnace heat dries out everything, including me; when the lines on my face seem deeper; when I feel fat from indulging in too many office snacks; when the house closes in and my husband barricades himself behind a book; when December is in my soul as well as on the calendar, that is when I take myself, if not to sea like the unnamed narrator of Moby-Dick, then to the woods for a long walk.

I have been losing my connection to nature and it makes me feel unnatural. I used to walk all the time at my last job including going to and from the train. I’d hear birds in the morning and look at the stars at night. Not now.

Driving to work has made me slow and fat, my legs rubbery. Winter makes me feel achy and twice my age. I wanted to push myself, to walk and not eat and pretend I had no financial, property or spousal responsibilities.

I went to the Swamp.

The Great Swamp is in the heart of suburbia. Part is a Morris County park. Part is a Somerset County park. The huge part in between is federal territory split between a “wilderness” area and a “management” area.

In spring I take a particular trail into the wilderness area at dawn and find all sorts of migrant songbirds. I also find deep mud, slippery rocks and wild bushes that are cut back once in a very long while. I have to really want to go birding to come here, but it is usually worth it.

This December day I wanted a long, flat, easy road so I hiked in the management area along Pleasant Plains Road, between the Helen Fenske visitor center (named for the woman whose efforts 50+ years ago scuttled a planned airport) and the unpaved area several miles away where the old visitor center once stood.

Many interesting birds have been found along this road, but I wasn’t expecting a lot. Winter is generally a quiet season for birding at the Swamp.

I was there to walk. Yet, almost by accident I found a bluebird in a tree and then a harrier flew low over a mowed, flooded field. Had I been driving I’d likely have missed them.

Several hours later, when I finally turned around and headed back to my car the way I’d come, the walk went from pleasure to an endurance test.

Suddenly the cold wind was in my face. My stomach was rumbling. My leg muscles were twinging and the gravel was making my feet hurt. The thought of my car parked so many miles away made me momentarily panic.

There are times I want to walk and go without food for so long I feel cleansed.

Then there are times I selfishly consider pushing myself so hard I collapse and die on the road.

I felt a little of both on this walk.

(Margo D. Beller)

Luckily, the way back always seems to go faster than the way out. Despite the aches and the wind I was back at the Fenske center a few hours later and then headed home in my warm car.

I was tailgated as I tried to enjoy the ride on the winding Harding Township back roads. On one hill I was forced to pull over several times because behemoths - luxury and otherwise - would come barreling downhill taking a lane and a half, leaving not much room for me.

It was only a more scenic, lower-speed version of my workday commute on Route 80.

I would like to say this winter trip provided an epiphany about the beauty of staying alive, of being glad for what you have, of taking life one day at a time.

That would be a lie. It was more like, you can walk to the ends of the Earth and your problems will still be with you.

Deal with it.

At least I was cheered by MH’s warm smile and the picture he took of a Carolina wren at our suet feeder while I was gone.

For the moment, I am trying not to be Restless.

Small World, Tragic Division

After a week working in the house, I feel the need to get out when the weekend comes around. My preference is to go birding with MH -- it gets both of us out of the house and walking. Sometimes we go to places pretty far afield, depending on the bird reports I read.

Last weekend, when Saturday was a washout after a week when the temperature went from snow and  "polar vortex" to nearly summer, I was hit with a bad case of cabin fever. Unfortunately, during that week MH was hit with a sinus infection.

So I went out alone. When I do that I stick to familiar places closer to home.

On Sunday I walked along Pleasant Plains Rd., the paved - and then unpaved - thoroughfare that runs through the Great Swamp's management area. It is wide open and dry, making it perfect after a flooding rain.

Pleasant Plains Rd., Great Swamp, last winter after Hurricane Sandy (Margo D. Beller)

I was not alone. There were plenty of other people, some with dogs, walking the road although not seeking birds as I was.

On the way back up the road to my car a woman pulled over in an SUV and handed me a flyer of a missing person who had gone out for a walk Saturday afternoon and had not come back. The face and name looked familiar, but it wasn't until the woman drove off that I realized I knew this man from a previous job.

Small world.

She told me he ran marathons and had endurance, but he'd also had a liver transplant years ago and had missed an important dose of medication. I can imagine this man, roughly my age, had also had cabin fever and had left his home in a town not far from the swamp and other parks to either walk or jog, alone.

The experience gave me a strange feeling. I hadn't particularly liked the man when I encountered him at work but the flyer referred to him as a "devoted family man, Boy Scout leader and friend." Now he's gone missing and as I write he still has not been found.

I had planned to go to a couple of other places once I got back to the car, but I suddenly did not want to travel alone anymore. I went home.

You can't live your life around the fear that any moment you will drop dead, be pushed into a van or decide to jog on an icy road only to find you've fallen into a frozen pond. You just can't or you'd become a shut-in.

At the same time, there are stories that give every woman - particularly bird-watching women - pause, such as the woman raped in Central Park's Strawberry Fields. I know exactly what area she was in - it is a quiet area off the main part where all the tourists look at the "Imagine" mosaic put in by John Lennon's widow.

There are a lot of good birds there, in season. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad people.

It scares me that this man, a marathon runner, who no doubt expected to be home in time for a hot supper, did not make it home this time. It could just as easily have been me.