My Famous Evening

by Howard Norman

  For the purposes of depositing much of it in a university collection, my friend Olivia Tecosky organized and cataloged my manuscripts, diaries, photographs, letters, translations, tapes, linguistic anecdotes, folktales, bird lists, drafts of novels, notebooks of all stripes, a good amount derived from travels and extended stays throughout subarctic, Arctic, and Atlantic Canada, roughly from 1969 to 2000. In this process Olivia dug up a file called “Garganey Correspondence” (sounds rather like a title by Robert Ludlum). This file contained 111 letters between myself and sixteen different correspondents in five different countries. The nature of the letters I received can, for the most part, be defined as passionate, knowledgeable, at times insufferable in their didacticism or quite wacky in their obsessions. Each of them featured the Garganey. While the level of scholarship and sharpness of insight greatly varies, these are letters from people truly looking at the world and thinking about birds, thus re-reading them was a heartening reward.

  Yet, of course, personality was in evidence. Allow me one example (August 27, 1988) from a letter sent from Scotland by a fellow just returned from a birding sojourn in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. After delineating in great detail the circumstances surrounding his own three sightings of a Garganey in Europe, he adds, “Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. John Creighton, whom I met in Mabou, informed me. You perhaps remember John. He sends his best. Now, for the truly important things in life! On my initial all-day trek along the highlands, I saw—.” He proceeded with a litany of sea birds, just their names, nothing else.

  I dashed off a letter stating, “Reading your account of European Garganeys—and now those Cape Breton birds—I was happily envious for you. Some day I’ll bring my daughter up there and show her some places you probably haven’t discovered yet. You have to know the right people, of course.” Naturally, the phrase “happily envious” contains opposing sentiments; I blame my persnickety tone on what I took as the competitive atmosphere of his letter, least which the subtle implication that the fabric of my memory was full of holes—the truth was, I had traveled in ornithologist John Creighton’s company throughout an Arctic archipelago, shared hours of conversation. John has three daughters.

  As for “Garganey Correspondence,” it occurred to me that the phenomenon of seeing a bird that has wandered an especially impressive distance from its normal range can be quite a haunting thing. It certainly makes one think about Time and Distance and Wanderlust. It seems as if one can glean from seeing a “migrant” a sense of the origin of wandering on Earth, what Bruce Chatwin called the “oldest peregrinations.” I cannot quite articulate this, it has an elusive quality. Perhaps it has something to do with investing hope and trust in the fact that the world is not completely discovered, that true, unforeseen mysteries are continually played out by wild creatures. That when some anarchy quickens in their little brains against the more predictable insistences of evolution, birds may travel to places they are not supposed to travel to, and therefore “lavish against conformity.”

  “What I especially love about your seeing a Garganey in Nova Scotia,” Patricia Langhorn wrote in a letter in 1996, in response to a brief article in which I mentioned my odd good fortune, “is that such sightings are so democratic. I mean, anyone might have seen it, been in the right place at the right time, don’t you think?”

  I do indeed. And then there was this, in a letter from Penelope Frances Oliphant, a sixty-six-year-old professional gardener, who filled the margins of her two letters in 1996 with expertly drawn hummingbirds: “My husband and I went on our honeymoon to Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick in 1946, just after the war. Looking out at the sea rocks and crashing waves of Cape Breton, the sky that summer often brooding up a squall, a very restless and mischievous sky, we felt, we absolutely delighted in the sheer amount of bird life to be seen. And no matter what Science may insist as being true of where birds are supposed to live, I can only imagine what sailors and fishermen, who no doubt know birds without necessarily knowing their Latin names, had seen across the centuries! Why, a Garganey off the coast of Nova Scotia may be the least of it!”

  Such a letter, of course, is not a vindication, since vindication is not desired. It simply underscored the fact that the Garganey I saw was an exhilarating presence and gift.

  The scientific vocabulary of ornithology is put to best use in exquisite writing such as Peter Matthiessen’s Wind Birds, which is a celebration of his home and birding haunt, Long Island, especially the wetlands, potato fields, and beaches immediately around Sagaponack. With incomparable deftness, Matthiessen poeticizes scientific vocabulary by plaiting it into brilliantly evocative descriptions. Indeed, the vast archive of natural history writing in libraries around the world puts a good face on Homo sapiens for posterity—we have paid attention and celebrated our planet, when otherwise so much of our relationship with nature, needless to say, has been and continues to be dismally species-centric and rapacious. (In October 2002 the ornithologists I spoke with were terribly disturbed by obvious evidence of global warming throughout Atlantic Canada.)

  There is a kind of found poetry in even the driest monograph, such as the one I recently read, “Parasites in the order Anseriforms (Screamers, Swans, Ducks and Geese)”—simply because a reader needs to pronounce the resonant names of birds themselves. In Nova Scotia, the categories of birds are COMMON IN SUITABLE HABITAT, FAIRLY COMMON, UNCOMMON, SELDOM SEEN, AND “ACCIDENTALS.”

  COMMON IN SUITABLE HABITAT and FAIRLY COMMON: Red-throated Loon, Common Loon, Pied-billed Grebe, Horned Grebe, Red-necked Grebe, Northern Fulmar, Cory’s Shearwater, Greater Shearwater, Sooty Shearwater, Manx Shearwater, Wilson’s Storm-Petrel, Leache’s Storm-Petrel, Northern Gannet, Great Cormorant, Double-crested Cormorant, American Bittern, Least Bittern, Great Blue Heron, Louisiana Heron, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, Glossy Ibis, Snow Goose, Brant, Canada Goose, Wood Duck, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Gadwall, Eurasian Wigeon, American Wigeon, Canvasback, Redhead, Ring-necked Duck, Greater Scaup, Lesser Scaup, Common Eider, Harlequin Duck, Oldsquaw, Black Scoter, Surf Scoter, White-winged Scoter, Common Goldeneye, Barrow’s Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser, Common Merganser, Red-breasted Merganser, Ruddy Duck, Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper’s Hawk, Northern Goshawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, Golden Eagle, American Kestrel, Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Gyrfalcon, Gray Partridge, Ring-necked Pheasant, Spruce Grouse, Ruffed Grouse, Yellow Rail, Clapper Rail, Virginia Rail, Sora, Common Moorhen, American Coot, Black-bellied Plover, Lesser Golden Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Piping Plover, Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs, Solitary Sandpiper, Willet, Spotted Sandpiper, Upland Sandpiper, Whimbrel, Hudsonian Godwit, Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, Sanderling, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, White-rumped Sandpiper, Baird’s Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, Purple Sandpiper, Dunlin, Stilt Sandpiper, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Ruff, Short-billed Dowitcher, Long-billed Dowitcher, Common Snipe, American Woodcock, Wilson’s Phalarope, Red-necked Phalarope, Red Phalarope, Pomarine Jaeger, Parasitic Jaeger, Long-tailed Jaeger, Great Skua, South Polar Skua, Laughing Gull, Black-headed Gull, Bonaparte’s Gull, Mew Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Herring Gull, Iceland Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Glaucous Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Black-legged Kittiwake, Sabine’s Gull, Ivory Gull, Caspian Tern, Roseate Tern, Common Tern, Arctic Tern, Forster’s Tern, Black Tern, Dovekie, Common Murre, Thick-billed Murre, Razorbill, Black Guillemot, Atlantic Puffin, Mourning Dove, Rock Dove, Black-billed Cuckoo, Great Horned Owl, Snowy Owl, Barred Owl, Long-eared Owl, Short-eared Owl, Boreal Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Common Nighthawk, Whip-poor-will, Chimney Swift, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Belted Kingfisher, Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Three-toed Woodpecker, Black-backed Woodpecker, Common Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Alde
r Flycatcher, Least Flycatcher, Eastern Phoebe, Great Crested Flycatcher, Western Kingbird, Eastern Kingbird, Horned Lark, Purple Martin, Tree Swallow, Rough-winged Swallow, Bank Swallow, Cliff Swallow, Barn Swallow, Gray Jay, American Crow, Common Raven, Black-capped Chickadee, Boreal Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, House Wren, Winter Wren, Marsh Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Eastern Bluebird, Veery, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Wood Thrush, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Water Pipit, Bohemian Waxwing, Northern Shrike, European Starling, White-eyed Vireo, Solitary Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Northern Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Cape May Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Pine Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Palm Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Black-and-White Warbler, American Redstart, Prothonotory Warbler, Ovenbird, Northern Waterthrush, Connecticut Warbler, Mourning Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Hooded Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Canada Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, Summer Tanager, Scarlet Tanager, Northern Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting, Dickcissel, Rufous-sided Towhee, Tree Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Clay-colored Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, Lark Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, Ipswich Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Sharp-tailed Sparrow, Seaside Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Evening Grosbeak, Dark-eyed Junco, Lapland Longspur, Snow Bunting, Bobolink, Red-winged Blackbird, Rusty Blackbird, Common Grackle, Brown-headed Cowbird, Orchard Oriole, Northern Oriole, Pine Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Red Crossbill, White-winged Crossbill, Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin, American Goldfinch, House Sparrow.

  UNCOMMON, SELDOM SEEN, AND “ACCIDENTALS”: Pacific Loon, White-tailed Tropicbird, American White Pelican, Brown Pelican, Magnificent Frigatebird, Tundra Swan, Greater White-fronted Goose, Barnacle Goose, Willow Ptarmigan, Purple Gallinule, Sandhill Crane, Northern Lapwing, Wilson’s Plover, American Avocet, Eskimo Curlew, Marbled Godwit, Curlew Sandpiper, Franklin’s Gull, Little Gull, Gull-billed Tern, Royal Tern, Least Tern, Sooty Tern, White-winged Dove, Barn Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, Chucks-will’s-Widow, Say’s Phoebe, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Cave Swallow, Carolina Wren, Sedge Wren, Northern Wheatear, Varied Thrush, Loggerhead Shrike, Golden-winged Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Townsend’s Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, Worm-eating Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, Kentucky Warbler, Black-headed Grosbeak, Lark Bunting, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Brewer’s Blackbird, Hoary Redpoll, Wild Turkey,

  and—thank you very much—Garganey.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Driving Miss Barry

  ON JULY 7, 2002, MY WIFE, JANE, DAUGHTER, EMMA, her friend Millan, and I boarded the Cat, a catamaran transporting tourists from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Rocky seas predicted, I bought Dramamine in the gift shop. Half an hour at sea, though the horizon was bright with a kind of watercolor wash of white, rains lashed the windows. On a video screen the ferry’s route was chronicled with a dotted line across a map of Atlantic Canada. It reminded me of the way black-and-white movies depicted time passing: Sometimes a ten-day passage in dangerous WWII submarine waters took ten seconds of a dotted line urgent as Morse code on the screen. As I stood out on the back deck and watched the nearly phosphorescent alluvial fan of water from the huge propeller, felt and heard the slightly disturbing basso continuo whine and growl of the engine, I read “The Sandpiper,” a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, one of the great poets of the twentieth century. She was born in Worchester, Massachusetts, in 1911. Her childhood was peripatetic. After her father’s death, she moved with her mother to Great Village, Nova Scotia, along the Bay of Fundy. From April 1915 into 1917 they lived with Elizabeth’s paternal grandparents in a house that was transported from the village of Mount Pleasant in the 1860s. Elizabeth returned to Great Village each summer from 1919 to 1930.

  The tide is higher or lower. He couldn’t tell you which.

  His beak is focused; he is preoccupied.

  from “The Sandpiper”

  “Preoccupied,” naturally, alludes to the singular condition of the writer, the beak a pen, the entire stanza the mental weather of composition. In terms of such symbolism, my understanding is too … obvious, isn’t it? Too simplistic, my assertion that to survive, artists (like the sandpiper who works the boundary between land and sea) must reside at the margins between the practical and the infinite in order to best meditate on the conditions of existence.

  Still, the poem “The Sandpiper” does indeed have much symbolic overlay. The sandpiper is a small creature and yet, by its proximity to the sea, we associate it with eternity.

  The poet observes the sandpiper in the moment, and yet the poem itself, its reliance on forms and sensation, like all great art, offers a way to resist short-lived reality.

  In Becoming a Poet, David Kalstone writes of “The Sandpiper”: “The bird, on the one hand, is battered and baffled by the waves; … on the other hand, it attends and stares, is preoccupied obsessed with the grains of sand, a litany of whose colors, minutely distinguished, ends the poem…. Bishop lets us know that every detail is a boundary, not a Blakean microcosm. Because of the limits they suggest, details vibrate with a meaning beyond mere physical presence. Landscapes meant to sound detached are really inner landscapes. They show an effort at reconstituting the world as if it were in danger of being continually lost.”

  On the deck of the Cat I laughed, remembering an ornithology monograph from the early 1900s having to do with northern California, in which the ornithologist equated a stretch of beach to the margins of a page in a book: “The sandpipers, dunlins, sanderlings and others lightly impressed the wet hieroglyphs of their footprints as marginalia.”

  That “The Sandpiper” is my favorite of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems is, no doubt, a naïve and (to poets, let alone scholars of her work) transparent choice, predictable for someone as preoccupied with birds as I am. Still, it is my favorite. Elizabeth Bishop observes a sandpiper; in Nova Scotia, it might be a Purple Sandpiper, a Spotted Sandpiper, a White-rumped Sandpiper. Yet, since Elizabeth Bishop spent so many years in Brazil, it is most likely Actitis macularia (Linnaeus), the Spotted Sandpiper, whose winter range includes Brazil. But what I love most about “The Sandpiper” is its physical momentum, how its imagery in turn agitates and soothes the heart. The tide comes in, the tide goes out; a sandpiper stitches zigzag along the beach, say near Great Village, Nova Scotia, “looking for something … Poor bird, he is obsessed.”

  In the Haliburton House Inn on Morris Street, Halifax, I met on the morning of July 8 with a woman dutifully and brilliantly “obsessed,” in her inventive scholarship and writings about Elizabeth Bishop. She is Sandra Barry, who has written Lifting Yesterday, a diligent, idiosyncratic, exhaustive 490-page study of Bishop in Great Village, of the village itself. Sandra may know (though she would protest this) more about Great Village than anyone alive. Self-deprecatingly, Sandra says of her book, “It’s more than anyone wants or needs to know.” I disagree; it is a vital addition to Bishop studies and, what’s more, a corrective to certain previous writings, as well as a lens through which to view the early part of the twentieth century in Nova Scotia.

  “Bishop writes beautifully about birds,” I said, over breakfast of coffee, cereal, and fruit, the morning buffet in Haliburton House Inn.

  “I’ve often thought she writes about them ecstatically,” Sandra said. “Like St. John Perse.”

  “I know I’m speaking too literally here, but from an ornithological perspective, in ‘The Sandpiper,’ she gets a thing or two wrong.”

  “‘As he runs, he stares at the dragging grains,’” Sandra said. “Yes, you mentioned that line.”

  “Only in the sense that no sandpiper really stares at anything; they don’t pause, certainly not to meditate. They just hurry along.”

  “The argument would be, it’s Bishop’s
projection, of course. It’s her own persona she locates inside the sandpiper’s, her own nature,” Sandra said. “To stare. To scrutinize. To make connections. Plus, she calls the sandpiper ‘a student of Blake,’ remember? Well, of course it’s Bishop herself’s a student of Blake! It’s quite funny, really. To me at least. The poem has humor, doesn’t it.”

  “I liked that this particular sandpiper is ‘in a state of controlled panic.’”

  “You identify with that, do you?” Sandra said, chuckling. “Well, I suppose I can, too. And think of EB herself. That she might’ve imagined herself inside a nervous, flitting sandpiper. Oh, my. That might be quite exhausting, don’t you think? Possibly quite enthralling, too.

  “A poet includes only what she has to in a poem. Yet Bishop doesn’t include a certain fact—that the sandpiper’s just looking for something to eat! That’s what they do all day!

  “Now”—laughing—“there you really are being too literal! Still, poets do have to eat, they have to make a living, don’t they? There’s a lot going on in that poem.”

  Sandra has what my old aunt Helen called an honest laugh. She finished her tea, I finished my coffee. Talking, talking, talking about Elizabeth Bishop with Sandra Barry. Quite an education for me. Her etiquette in the face of my ignorance was more than generous. She navigated around any and all unschooled queries, or deftly revised them, all for the sake of spirited conversation.