South American Diary #9: In the company of rare birds

Crested caracara , near Serrano Glacier in d'Agostini Fjord (Photo by Jacqueline Windh)

  
     No matter how much you love birds, they never love you back.
     I'm not sure how that unspoken truth factors into the widespread appeal of the avian segment of the animal kingdom, but it must. Birds play hard to get, their quick transit through their air so different from our earthbound plodding. People are everywhere; birds, not so much. Certain humans yearn for what glimpses we can catch of them. They have beauty and grace and we ... get to look at them, sometimes, if we're lucky.
    As a guy who glories in the range of ordinary birds to be found in the Chicago area—cardinals, sparrows woodpeckers, bluejays, robins, herons, ducks, hawks, vireos, finches—of course I'd keenly anticipate what wondrous birds I'd encounter cruising the coast of Chile. 
    And I was not disappointed.  It started with a pair of kelp geese, a coal black female and her snow white male, seen on a rock on our first Zodiac foray from the ship, just past the Garibaldi Glacier. A slow-moving falcon called the caracara (above) was a common sight, as were albatrosses. We saw red-footed cormorants and once and—though I missed it, alas—a pygmy owl.

Simon Boyes (photo by Jacqueline Windh)

     The voyage—of the RCGS Resolute, under the auspices of One Ocean Expeditions—had its own resident ornithologist, Simon Boyes, who has been leading bird-watching tours since 1977, and done some 300 trips on all seven continents. 
     "When I was about 12, I found my love of birds," he told us, at the expedition's start. "I found I had to know what everything was called. I had to know, for some strange reason it motivated me all the time. You need to know, what they are, these little things hopping along the rocks." 
     I was intrigued that Simon read classics at Oxford.
      "It was useful for studying the scientific names of birds," he explained, noting that he preferred Greek to Latin, which did not surprise me: in his history, Herodotus turns his attention to birds, to ibises and ducks, as well as creatures less tangible: phoenixes, winged snakes and doves that speak with human voices.  

    Simon had no interest in being interviewed, at least not by me—the media is in trouble when bird-watchers draw away from us in distrust—but I managed to ask him about Oxford as an institution. 
    "I thought it was terrible," he said. "It was just so pre-historic."
    In his opening talk, Simon noted that three Wilson's storm petrels had already gotten stranded on the upper deck.
     "There's lots to look at, lots to learn about," said Simon. "I hope I can encourage you to share my love of bird-watching."
    And so we did. I loved hearing Simon talk about birds. He spoke of the sooty shearwater—"We have seen plenty and we probably will see more"—and the steamer duck, both flying and flightless, including the etymology of the name which, to my surprise, was not a nod toward their eventual culinary preparation.
     "Reminds some folks of a paddle steamer, which is how they got their name."
     I let the bird names wash over me: the dolphin gull and the Chilean skua, the Andean condor and the black chested buzzard eagle. The variable hawk  and the green-backed firecrown, a hummingbird that I would later see, hovering directly in front of my face. (At least I think that's the variety of hummingbird I saw, a foot from my face for less than a second).
    Simon would give us a detail or two about each bird and move nimbly to the next. The last part of the name of the thorn-tailed rayadito means "little striped one," aptly enough.  We met the the dark- bellied cinclodes, the fire-eyed diucon (below) and, a favorite, the dark-faced ground tyrant. Then on to the long-tailed meadowlark, the black-chinned siskin, and the Chimango caracara, which I would see several times, on the wing and perched in trees above our heads. 
     "There are no crows in Chile," said Simon. "So these birds take the niche of crows, cleaning up the ecosystem." 
     Simon mentioned the magellanic oystercatcher and the Southern lapwing.    
     "We may come cross the two-banded plover," he speculated, before flashing a photo of the grey-breasted seed snipe.
    "Not a true snipe," he sniffed, with a trace of censure, followed by its slightly smaller cousin, the least seedsnipe. The rufous-chested dotterel and ... prophetically in my case -- the South American Snipe.

The South American Snipe

    Prophetic because, a few days later, I found myself plodding through a marshy grassland  beyond the Falcon Glacier. A pair of my shipmates had paused, gazing down at a spot in the tall grass. There was the slightest movement,. They moved off, but I stayed, slowly tracking the little guy  through a screen of blades. It was amazing how well he was camouflaged. Just a flash, a form, then vanishing again. 
     But I stood still, up to my ankles in water, and as he ambled off, I gently followed him, sloshing along. For one moment, he came into plain sight, distinct from the grasses, and I took his portrait. Then he was gone again.
     I had always heard of snipe hunts, but didn't imagine I'd participate in one, never mind be successful. I rushed to show the photo to Simon, and he confirmed my identification, with what I thought was a touch of asperity. My hunch is that, in his eyes, I somehow wasn't worthy of the prize. This was his profession, after all, and if anyone finds a snipe, it should him, and not this dabbler, this bulbous-nosed American dabbler. It almost sounds like a variety of bird, though were that the case, Simon no doubt would have warmed to me a little.

A fire-eyed diucon, seen at  Puerto Edén, Chile (photo by Jacqueline Windh)

     
     

"Explore our creativity"—street art should not just be saved, but encouraged

Santiago street mural

     I'm back from my trip to South America, one aspect of which meshed neatly with current events in Chicago. This is today's column in the paper—my South American Diary series will continue tomorrow, and on off days when the column doesn't appear, until I've exhausted the material I gathered, which will probably be sometime in May.

     Yes, I was chagrined when I realized that Chicago's historic mayoral election on April 2 would find me up a Chilean fjord on a research ship, gazing at glaciers. Not exactly ideal place to take the political pulse of the city.
     In my defense, when I accepted the invitation, I had no way of knowing the contest wouldn't be between Bob Fioretti and Paul Vallas, or some similar head-scratcher. Besides, the Sun-Times has a very deep bench, and I knew it would cover the election just fine without me.
     Besides, travel is broadening. It gives fresh perspective. For instance, Saturday, I had a few hours to kill before the flight home, so ducked into Santiago to visit a home of poet Pablo Neruda. En route, I couldn't help but be impressed by the street art: colorful, dramatic, and everywhere.

     The seed of a thought—Chicago has many murals like these, but could use more—had barely been planted when news came Monday that Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) has finally succeeded in creating a City of Chicago Mural Registry, to list approved artworks so that Streets and Sanitation doesn't accidentally remove them.
     The registry was sparked last year when the city, trying to woo Amazon with a flurry of housecleaning, erased several significant murals, including a piece by French street artist Blek le Rat that Cards Against Humanity founder Max Temkin commissioned for the popular party game's Elston Avenue headquarters.
     "Every so often Streets and San would roll up with a soda blaster, and we'd run out and say, 'Don't take it down! Don't take it down!" said Temkin. "The morning when Mayor Emanuel was touring the Lincoln Yards site with Amazon they just came in the middle of the night and did a wholesale clean-up."
     Hopkins began compiling a list of street murals, which turned out to have a second use
     "People were saying, 'How do I access this list of art? I'm going to be in Chicago next week. I want to go see it,'" said Hopkins. "I realized we had a tourism opportunity on our hands. What started out as an attempt to assist Streets and San employees morphed into a cultural phenomenon."

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2006: Roofers again at scene of crime

Notre Dame roof and spire, 2017, destroyed in a fire on Monday

     Forgive me for interrupting my South American series. But the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral Monday was truly a shock, one that has to be addressed. Modern life has reduced fires everywhere, in homes and factories, never mind near-millennium-old icons such as the most popular tourist destination in France.

     The initial fear might have been terrorism, but I had a different suspicion, one that, while not confirmed, is given credibility by the scaffolding around the church roof. I wrote this when the great Pilgrim Baptist Church burned. You'd think people would learn, but they never do.  
     I remember hearing from roofers who felt ill-used when this ran, so phoned a few roofing and contracting safety associations looking for their perspective. My sense is it'll be a long wait. 

THE ROOFER DID IT

     The heart breaks to see a tragedy like the fire at Pilgrim Baptist Church, for the twin loss, both to the architectural history of the city and to a vibrant spiritual community. But there is one aspect that almost makes a person have to smile, albeit a cynical, head-shaking curl of the lip. That was when city officials speculated that roofers working on the church just might have touched off the blaze.
     Gee, ya think? You mean the guys with blowtorches working at the exact spot the fire broke out? Now there's a theory. It's ALWAYS the roofers. Do you realize how many public buildings burn during roof work? Two years ago, the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton caught fire. In 2002, we almost lost another Louis Sullivan building, the magnificent Carson, Pirie Scott Building downtown, when roofers set the place on fire, and exploding propane tanks sent burning debris showering onto State Street. In 1999, it was another black church, St. Stephen AME Church, one of the oldest African-American churches in the city, that was burned, destroying the roof and charring the walls. I'm telling you, roofers are worse than the Klan.
     OK, that's a bit extreme. It isn't always the roofers. Countless roofers are reading this now, with their coffee and doughnuts, waiting for the supervisor to show up, and if there were ever a group that could tar and feather a guy, it's roofers. So we should recognize that other trades also torch the places they're supposed to be fixing. In 1998, the 120-year-old Barrington United Methodist Church burned to the ground when workers repairing a window burned a hole through the wall. Old churches are generally tinderboxes that could be set on fire with an ice cube.
     That said, roofing is a particularly nasty, smelly, extra-dangerous business involving open flames and hot tar, which burns like napalm.
     So, don't blame the roofers—but maybe an extra level of caution could be exerted when repairing the roofs of irreplaceable cultural treasures, particularly old churches. Say a guy standing there with a hose. Or at the very least, the minister, watching carefully, his left hand on a cell phone, ready to call 911, and his right hand on a Bible, praying with all his might. I would if it were my church.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 9, 2006

South American Diary #8: Shipmates

Julia Carlson

     Julia Carlson is the first person I've met who lives in Tasmania. So I wasn't about to let the opportunity go to waste when she joined me for breakfast after the ship docked at the port of Santiago. 
     Tasmania is an island off the southeastern tip of Australia, and the very definition of the far margin of civilization, in my view. I had to know: why go to all the effort of leaving her home in Dover—population 500—drive an hour and a half to Hobart, fly an hour to Sydney then 13 hours in the air to Santiago, three hours more hours to Ushuaia, then two weeks of sailing, all just to end up in another far corner for the planet?
     "I come from the end of the world that's paradise and go to the other end of the world that isn't," she said, carefully, as if she had practiced the line.
     Nobody goes on a cruise for the people. Well, maybe they do; I didn't take a poll. I certainly didn't sign on to the RCGS Resolute's expedition up the coast of Chile for that purpose. The focal point were the fjords, glaciers, moraines, waterfalls, forests, stone-strewn beaches, marine life, wildlife, birds. 
     Yet interacting with my fellow passengers, who tended to be a decade or two my senior and often from places I had never been, became a secondary highlight. Between all those deep dives into nature and science were breakfasts and lunches, coffee and cocktails, dinner and discussions at the rail, in the observatory, in the Zodiac boats rushing to and from shore. 
    I'll be honest. I really liked the people part. My life and job are so constructed that I mostly sit in an empty room, staring at a computer monitor, pounding a keyboard, twirling words into something fluffy and consumable, like cotton candy wanded around a paper cone. Occasionally I phone or visit someone, but that's an exception: one or two hours out of every eight. 
     I loved hearing how people speak. 
     "I'm spending my mum's inheritance," explained Julia, when I asked her about her career. "I looked after my kids, so I didn't have a profession. Just a mom."
     She was free to roam after her husband died two and a half years ago, but all was not loneliness.
    "I got a new man now," she said, with a note of pride.
     Some people became favorites, and I was comfortable plopping down next to them—the first people I spoke with: Keith, an oil industry professional and his wife Maggie, a budding writer; Dr. Lorne Greenspan, an MD turned medical administrator from Toronto, and his girlfriend Donna Cohen; Gregory and Karen, adventure vacation planners from California, Gillian and Colin, a bluff couple from Australia (you really couldn't go wrong with Australians. They love to travel and do it well); Len Miller, the sole Chicagoan, who grew up in Roger's Park; Alex, 10, the sole child on the ship, and his parents; Marion Kaplan, who took photographs in Africa for Life, Time and National Geographic in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and really deserves a post of her own. 
    Not that every encounter was pleasant.  The English, older ladies traveling alone, could be problematic. I sat down across from one I hadn't met and began conversation, which she stopped dead.
    "Are you Jewish?" she asked, vis a vis nothing. 
     I pressed my palms against the table and hunched my shoulders, half standing up, as if to leave, my attempt at a small joke that baffled her. I stayed, pushed past it, and was rewarded with a story how she went to Africa in the company of a man not her husband. 
     "It was an arrangement," she said.
     The most anodyne older person held some sizzling tidbit of the past: an adventure, disappointment, achievement. There were always kids to talk about, the fire axe behind the glass if conversation lagged. 
     Some were almost unapproachable. The German couples formed such tight bonds—think hydrogen atoms—and always sat at the tables for two. The Germans in general seemed a taciturn race: I sat with one solitary traveler, Yuri, and we ate pretty much in silence, my forays into conversation perishing in the Teutonic cold. 
      A few passengers seemed to give up the effort. 
     "How many times can you ask 'Where are you from?'" complained a scowling, fierce Englishwoman with cat's eye glasses, to her companion, as they took a seat beside me before a lecture.
     I briefly considered turning, smiling warmly, and replying, "I'm not saying a word to you." But I thought better of it, and zipped my lip. I carry around the urge to speak like a metal cylinder of compressed gas, a burden I sometimes contain, often don't, spinning the valve despite my best efforts. I have no doubt that if you questioned my shipmates, they'd say I was gabby to the point of logorrhea.  And that was with my hand white-knuckling the knob, trying to keep it shut. 
    "These fleeces make my skin crawl," she continued. "Everything that touches my skin has to be cotton, or silk."
      I fingered the green REI fleece that I wore continuously on the voyage. Again considered speaking, something along the line of, "I have three others at home identical to this, in various colors. I love them." Again, I said nothing, and avoided the woman until the last day of the voyage. 
     But those were in the minority. I had some conversations I'll remember for a long time. My father is not a bluff Irishman like Sean Smyth, of Dublin, who was there with his adult son David.  Sean and I had a wonderful, warm, close, confidential, uproarious dinner. It was so normal I didn't take notes.

Sean Smyth

    A few days earlier I had sat in the bar with him while he made our acquaintance by showing off his tattoos, with the names of his children—David, April—and grandchildren, applied by himself when in his cups, using a needle.  
     He worked in some vague quasi-military role in Syria and assorted hotspots. 
    "My job took me away when he was growing up," Sean said. "I was never around for him. He left when he was 17 and went to Australia."
     Where David started a very successful travel business, and invited his father to go on this voyage.
    "I said, 'Why son are you bringing me?'" The answer was they had never spent time together, and now they would, to what seemed like wonderful effect.
     What about his wife, I asked, David's mother?
     "She wasn't asked to come," Sean said.
     The two men were very different.
    "He doesn't drink whereas I drink," said Sean, hefting a pint. "My son is like my dad."
     I hear you, brother. David was a bearded, taciturn man of 41, sporting a large earring, and I wanted to ask him how he viewed the whole thing, but literally never had the opportunity. Though judging from their body language, seeing them always together, exploring the magnificence of nature, I felt I had my answer. I meant to corner David but didn't, though in my defense, I was on vacation too, in theory.
      The central story I got is that everyone has a story, if you only ask, only listen, and be patient until they tell it. You sometimes have to push past their thorns and prickly armor. The fierce Englishwoman with the cat's eye glasses warmed up after a film by one of the ship's photographers, Jeff Topham, who projects a casual, smiling surfer dude demeanor but grew up in Liberia and recently returned to help the country reclaim its photographic legacy after years of ruinous civil war. 
    We paused in a hallway and the Englishwoman explained how she spent several years in Zambia with a lover, but realized, in her interactions with his family, she would never be accepted and reluctantly went home to England. 
     We struck up a conversation the next day, the last day of the voyage. She was apparently inspired by a talk I had given about telling your story. The subject got to first impressions, and I warmed enough to gingerly her to tell her about her rocky start, given her enmity to the clothes I was wearing, a tale that shocked and amused her.
     "I live alone and talk mostly to my cats," she said, by way of explanation and apology, which I accepted readily — many people, myself included, have a habit of talking first and then thinking about what we said long afterward, if then. I said we had never been properly introduced, and asked her her name. She didn't reply. I asked again, and she didn't reply, so I let it go. 
     Later that evening, she rushed up to me in the hall. For some reason, what I had been trying to find out before took a while to sink in.
     "Suzanne," she said. "My name is Suzanne."

 

South American Diary #7: Garibaldi Glacier

     Chile, Isabel Allende writes in her memoir, "My Invented Country," "is as far as you can go without falling off the planet." 
     Yet once there, at times it feels you've done just that, tumbling across the solar system to land in some remote corner of Saturn, navigating a lake of frozen nitrogen in the shadow of the great rings.
     Such as when contemplating the face of Garibaldi glacier, located, in the Alberto de Agostini National Park. Shortly after my soul-stirring encounter with Garibaldi Fjord, which I attempted to describe yesterday, the glacier that carved the waterway slid into sight.  
     As if that hadn't been wonder aplenty for one morning.       

     We piled into the Zodiac boats—stout black inflatable craft—for a closer look, skimming across the ice clotted fjord. This might be a good moment to say that I've been aboard the Resolute, an ice-reinforced passenger ship operated by One Ocean for the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, which has been inspecting glaciers along the southern coast of Chile. An RCGS fellow asked me to come along. I said yes.
      I probably shouldn't even bother doing the word thing in relation to glaciers. Just post a few photos and be done. But even the photos can be deceptive. The Garibaldi glacier is 250 feet thick, in places. The glacier face meeting the water had to be 200 feet tall. 
    And as much as I loved Chile, Allende writes something in her memoir that made me glad to not be from there. She said her grandfather always told her:

....just as Romans live among ruins and fountains without seeing them, we Chileans live in the most dazzling country on the planet without appreciating it.  We don't notice the quiet presence of the snowy mountains, the sleeping volcanoes, and the unending hills that wrap us in their monumental embrace; we are not amazed by the frothing fury of the Pacific bursting upon our coasts, nor the quiet lakes of the south and their musical waterfalls; we don't, like pilgrims, venerate the millinery nature of our native-growth forests, the moonscapes of the deserts of the north, the fecund Aruacan rivers,  or the blue glaciers where time is shattered into splinters. 

    Exactly. I'm not sure what time being "shattered into splinters" means. But that's as good a description of how being there felt as anything I could conjure up, and I'm glad to come from somewhere else, so I could appreciate it. Though Allende is Chilean, and she noticed these wonders. So I'm sure she is not alone.      

South American Diary, #6: Pining for the fjords

     "I've got to send some emails," Michael said, pushing away from our first breakfast on the ship.
     "I think I'll go up top and look around," I said. The RCGS Resolute is a large vessel, with a special steel reinforced hull to travel through ice-laden waters. It was the fourth passenger ship to traverse the North Passage, with the help of a Canadian Navy ice breaker. Yet it has a formal dining room on the fourth floor. I worked my way forward, to the open deck above Deck 7.
      A fjord is a long, narrow waterway created by a glacier. Those words seem dry on the page. Honestly, prior to coming to Chile, the word "fjord" made me think of just one thing: the Monty Python Parrot Sketch. 
     "It's gotta be pining for the fjords..." 
     "'Pining for the fjords?!' What kind of talk is that?"
      But standing there, surprised, despite all the foreshadowing that should have tipped me off long before, to find myself in a fjord.... aboard a ship, atop a ship, watching the fjord flow toward me, past me, to the left and right, behind me. Fjord everywhere I looked.
     Dawn had just come, no sun, but a lightening blue-grey sky the color of stainless steel. The snapping wind ruffled my clothing. The mountains were deep green to black, reflecting in the water, slashed with silver ripples, dappled with chunks of ice. Words must inevitably fail me here, but I was overcome by the enwrapping view, the overwhelming 360 degree expanse of  mountains, rounded and jagged, snowcapped and bare, looming so close and far off. For a moment it seemed the ship was sailing directly into a mountain range; then, to the right, a passage emerged between two peaks.
      I felt so ... stupid. Here I am at home, working every day, in my little office with with the wide red pine floorboards I'm so fond of. Satisfied with that. When just a couple of airplane rides and a short sail away was this. 
      It was all too much. I turned my head, pressed the fingers of my left hand against my cheek and my palm tight against my mouth, sobbing.
    Regaining myself, I turned and bolted below decks, hammering on Michael's door as if the ship were sinking. He beckoned me in.
    "Screw the email!"  I said. "Follow me!" 
    I practically dragged him up four flights of stairs. 
    "Look at this!" I cried, gesturing all around, to the sky, the mountains, the water. "Look at this!!!" 
     And it was only the first morning of the first day. 
   

South American Diary #5: "The End of the World"—Ushuaia

The Arakura Ushuaia is the green building set up in the mountains on the far left.

     When I learned the flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia is three and a half hours long, I was taken aback. That's the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles.
     Americans, what is to be done with us? We assume everywhere that isn't the United States must be small. But 2,600 miles is quite the distance within a country not my own, due south yet, from the Paris of South America to a town that calls itself 'The End of the World."
     Ushuaia, despite being the southernmost city on earth was, almost needless to say, bigger than I expected. A city not unlike Boulder, Colorado, set in the foothills of a mountain range, though the southern slope of the Martial Mountains—an offshoot of the continent spanning Andes—struck me as several derivations larger than the Rockies.
      "Ushuaia makes Boulder seem like Kansas," I said.
     This is where Ernest Shackleton and his crew set sail for the Antarctic, and to this day polar expeditions gather to push toward South Georgia, a thriving industry still, judging from  the signs for polar adventures and stores offering snowboards and fleece.
      The organizers of our expedition to the glaciers of Chile, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, had put its adventurers up in the Arakura Ushuaia, an improbable luxury hotel tucked high in the mountains, framed by a snow-capped peak. The place is huge, with the vibe of a hotel in Finland, all bleached wood and raw stone and odd energy-saving touches—you tuck your room key in a slot to turn the room lights on, and they flick off when you leave, thus saving the planet. There was also a series of expansive outdoor thermal pools, where I set up operations, as well as a lap pool, where I happily swam off the confinement of travel.
      The hotel prides itself in its classical music series, and we excused ourselves from dinner early and went over to listen to the Camarata Bariloche, a well-known Argentinian string ensemble--a dozen violinists, a few cellists and a bass. It felt so disorienting, to travel all this way only to sit listening to Bach, like traveling to Mars and finding your childhood home.
     The next day we wandered the town—mostly closed on a Sunday morning, but a caretaker was already at the Municipal Cemetery, ready for visitors, and we strolled around. It was quite run down, with markers toppled and crumbling, and humble to begin with, a modest contrast to the luxurious granite tombs and marble angels at Recoleta Cemetery. Though, it hardly needs to be pointed out that the occupants here are just as dead, at a fraction of the cost.  Caskets could spied through glass doors, and tableaus of the lives of the departed are set out—photographs and coffee mugs and poignant notes from children crying out to their parents. Some caskets are covered with lace, given covers like beds, which I suppose they are. We spent a long time there, walking up and down the aisles, gazing in near silence at these tributes to lives that had unfolded in this out-of-the-way place. Memento mori.
    There was some kind of charity race going on, with young people in running clothes with numbers pinned to their shirts. The military had set up a tent to show off their various specialities, diving equipment and machine guns and such, a friendly public service that only subtly conveyed: We aren't drowning your kids in the River de la Plata anymore. 
      Michael and I wandered over to an old airfield, where a mothballed DC3 sat slowly moldering in the high winds ruffling across the Beagle Channel. Chile sat there, in plain sight, across the water, as if telling us: get on with it already.
     You don't often see an old bird like the DC3, and I slowly walked around the plane, inspecting it from all angles. When I looked up, Michael was gone, vanished over a fence and into a nearby field, where he had found transportation of an even more ancient lineage. I considered following him, but paused at the fence and held back, letting the two have their moment of communion uninterrupted.