Dance of the Mergansers
 |
Red-breasted mergansers. Photo by soenke |
Visiting the oily, noisy shores of Newark, New Jersey, author Dan North discovers that mergansers are oblivious to--or know how to transcend--their conditions:
Mergansers were diving together here long before today's diesel fumes, tank farms and garbage dumps. They were here many millennia before landfill reduced the Hackensack meadowlands to half their original size and invasive phragmites crowded out native reeds. Mergansers dove here long before industrialization brought paint, varnish, hat, leather, jewelry, fertilizer, defoliant and pesticide factories to the Passaic's Newark shore. They fished these shallows eons before the New York, Philadelphia and Washington 19th century
vacationing aristocracy swam and sailed from the 200-room colonnaded, turreted, flag-bedecked La Tourette Hotel on Bayonne's Newark Bay shoreline. Mergansers wintered here long before the Native Americans, Dutch and English discovered this then-pristine bay. Now, as our carbon emissions begin to further transform the planet in unimaginable ways, mergansers still dive together here. Seeing them is a gift that no amount of plastic bags flapping in the stunted bayside willows can spoil, and I'll take it.
(To read Dan's entire essay, click here.)
To discover other stories of inspiring people, stories, photos, and ideas, subscribe to
|
