The Loon’s wail catches me by surprise and is so clear and so close and so stirring that my brain registers the sound as fake before it will accept it as real. For a moment I am sure that the pale young man who passed my small kayak on his shiny blue paddleboard a few minutes earlier, must have pulled out a fake loon call.
But this was no trinket. It’s a real loon, floating quietly in the water about 5 feet from me.
His shiny red eyes watch me carefully, his neck crouched back, feathers slightly ruffled, ready to gently dip underwater when his curiosity about me is satisfied, which I can feel will be any second. I am but a momentary distraction in his search.
But he and his aching wail are more than a momentary distraction to me. It hurts me, hits me in the chest like the memory of something dear, lost. A Cornell Audio Curator once said that the Loon’s wail, unlike tremolo, yodeling, or hooting, is a locator call. “The wail is a Loon’s way of saying: I am here, where are you?”
I am here. Where are you?
The familiarity of this feeling stings my eyes wet.
Although I am fortunate to have two loving parents, I am an orphan in the mountains, in the woods where I live. My upbringing taught me well of how to survive in the built western world, in a society that values production, knowledge of the market, and general business acumen. These are skills that can mean the difference between succeeding or not in this world, and I am grateful for them.
But I yearn for another type of wisdom. The type that perhaps my great great great grandmother, Celenir, an Inuit woman descended from Northern Quebec, might have had. And I search for it, for her, for any fragments of direction from my ancestors, everywhere.
At times, I find glimpses. In a fallen Jay’s feather confirming my choice of trail location. A wild blackberry plant spontaneously sprouting where I wondered about placing a grove. A hermit thrush’s affirming serenade as I salvage a roadkill deer. But these gifts of direction and guidance are so fleeting and my yearning so strong that most of the time, all I feel is, I am here! Where Are You?
Where is the guidance that will help me choose which tree species to build with? Where is the deeply held belief among my kin that will make it easy to decide whether to develop a spot on the sanctuary or spare it? How will I know if a certain native, but commercial, cultivar will disrupt this land? Where is the reassuring elder who will counsel me to forget about the market’s demands, and just follow my heart? Where? Where are you???
In the sad, searching undertones of the Loon’s wail, I find my own sadness. Sadness over something passed away, or forgotten, or otherwise lost long ago. This mutual feeling of seeking between Loon and I, for that moment when I realize it is shared, soothes me like a mother’s blanket laid over my heart, her voice empathizing, consoling me: I know, I miss it too.
It helps.