SECOND ESSAY: The movement of living matter

Birds and my family are connected by a fragile yet tenacious, translucent yet dim rope called migration… well, aren’t they?

Migration runs deep within me. All my life, since I was a kid, I’ve heard stories about the migrant roots of my family. My great-great-grandmother immigrated from Scotland to Argentina to meet my great-great-grandfather and had my great-grandfather, Pedro, father of my grandmother Nancy and my uncle Carlos. I also heard about my surname’s story; my Italian heritage. In Argentina, grandma Nancy met grandpa Lucio, son of an Italian immigrant trying to look for a better life in a promising new country. Yet the story that I have heard the most is my dad’s story, mostly because as soon as the cold comes it is my first-choice movie every Sunday evening, when my dad and I are wrapped up in three multicoloured woollen blankets in front of the fireplace with tea and mate in hand. I’m not quite sure when was the first time I asked him about his story, but I sure remember the dozens of times he explained it to me after that—always with a cup of mate in his hand, a torn black sweater that once said “La Plata” and a pair of sweatpants which are probably older than me. He starts and never ends… as every Argentinian. He was born and raised in a little town in the countryside of Argentina, where cattle population beats human population by far. His eager and peckish inner self pushed him to move away from home and establish in Barcelona for four years to become a doctor in the IT field. What was supposed to be temporary became permanent when he met the woman that I now call my mom.

All these stories have supported the belief of me being product of several transatlantic migrations which, in turn, make me an innate migrant myself, in some way. Besides, I have always thought of the word migration as a synonym of traveling from one place to another and establish in the new place being fully aware from where you came. Little did I know that a one-hour class was going to shift all the thinking built throughout my twenty-one years.

I had never thought of migration as lifestyle, as an innate mechanism, as a home call; not until I knew about bird migration. I had never thought that I would get goose bumps during a class either; yet, there I was, eyes blinking unconsciously and mind dealing with dangerous thoughts. 

Migratory birds possess a quality coded in their genome which is shared among other taxa, the knowledge of home. The plasticity of this quality is quite astonishing: mixed with selfishness and possessiveness, it raises a novel behaviour which we call territorialism; mixed with certain human emotions, it becomes in patriotism, and mixed with navigational mechanisms and endocrine controls, it gives birth to migration. Birds and humans know very well their home. They both are territorial, there’s no doubt. Birds aren’t patriotic because they lack human emotions such as love or devotion, yet humans are. And they both migrate, there’s no doubt either; but is animal/bird migration and human migration the same?

There I was, sitting in front of the laptop while being blindsided by all this new information and this annoying question that just popped up in my mind. I repeated it countless times in my head, forwards and backwords, but nothing. I tried to say it out loud risking to make a scene in the middle of the class, but nothing. I tried to write it down and read it, but nothing—on the verge of despair and insaneness, I tried to look for the definition of animal/bird migration and human migration and start from there, and this popped up: “animal migration is the relatively long-distance movement of individual animals, usually on a seasonal basis” and “human migration is the movement by people from one place to another with the intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily in a new location”. So, clearly not the same.

Animal migration, especially bird migration, is an innate behaviour, a natural instinct sculpted through evolution, whereas human migration is a learnt behaviour consequence of a non-suitable environment. Migratory birds are born with the necessary mechanisms to travel extraordinary distances away from home and return successfully. Sun compass, spatial orientation, stars, experience cues among others enable them to orientate and know exactly where they are heading to; without them they could get lost and most certainly die, which would lead to an exponential downfall of their chance to survive and reproductive success. They certainly risk their lives when taking these incredible journeys, but they also risk them if they don’t go. What a gesture of ancient faith and present courage.

Bird migration is not up to discussion, it is a necessity, it is Zugunruhe. This German compound word consisting of Zug (move, migration) and Unruhe(anxiety, restlessness) describes to perfection the innate behaviour that is migration for this taxon. And that is precisely what draws the line between migrant birds and my migrant family. My migrant family don’t possess Zugunruhe, their migration was either a choice or a necessity driven by the human society itself, but definitely not driven by an innate behaviour. In all my years of migration-story-listener I thought that both migrations were the same, because I thought both migrations were a necessity, but I was not thinking beyond… Who or what created that necessity. My dad, Remo, or my great-grandfather, Lucio, had the necessity to move away from home and migrate to a new environment to have a better quality of life and opportunities to succeed, to find a place to stablish, have children, grow old and die. However, with worse or better quality of life they would have survived anyway, which means that human migration is not something that evolution has selected, it is a human adaptation to some despicable aspects of the human nature and society itself.

In the present world, human migration is either a sign of ambition or a consequence of the ambition of others. Despite the difference between both migrations, there is one thing that is forged in our most deeply selves in both birds and humans—the knowledge of home. Migratory birds return home every year after the tough arid winter finally comes to an end, and migrants live their lives with the hope of one day returning home… or with the hope of never returning home. Even so, both of them are fully aware of home.

—

It never crossed my mind, not even once, the thought of me being captivated by these flying living beings we call birds, let alone relating my family stories to their migratory behaviour. It is something that I probably would have never realised if it wasn’t for this course and that probably no one of my family is going to realise ever; for that, I am going to open their eyes as soon as I finish my very own migratory experience and I return home on Christmas day. I thought of me as a person that is hard to captivate, impress and shake up, but I also thought that birds and humans migrate the same way… so, I guess you never know.

Birds and my family are connected by a fragile yet tenacious, translucent yet dim rope called migration…no… a tenacious and dim rope called home.

[word count: 1241 words]

Definitions from the Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org) and the Langenscheidt German Dictionary (https://en.langenscheidt.com).

FIRST ESSAY: Salmon run. Human run: Running away from Mother Nature

I sat down on a log barred in the shore of the river, wrapped all up in three layers of clothes: a tight thermal long sleeve black shirt which was acting as my second skin under an oversize sweatshirt from that time when I was in Toronto, and the brand-new Omni-wind Block Columbia jacket I bought out of necessity and whim, and I watched. 

The scarf I was wearing felt like a boa constrictor trying to eat me for dinner, yet it didn’t bother me because it was keeping me insulated from the cold weather. I was entertaining myself with a pretty twisted yet natural scene, I was watching two sockeye salmon males fighting indeed. When suddenly, all those layers became too much; my body raised its temperature as my heart rate started exceeding the normal resting rate and while the adrenaline that the adrenal glands had just spited out to the bloodstream was causing my pupils look as if I had had magic mushrooms. That heat was accompanied by the wind carrying sand from shore of that shallow river, from the ancient arena.

Bites as blows of sword, harsh bright skins as armors and other sockeye salmon as Roman citizens; a few carcasses were lying on the bottom of the river as either defeated or victorious salmon who had ended their cycle. Both warriors knew perfectly their rival’s weakness, as well as Apollo knew about Achilles’ heel. The Roman emperor always used to put a weaker gladiator, the one he wanted to be killed, to fight against another who was likely to win, the one all the bets were on. But who would do that apart from a vile human being? Who would sentence someone to death beforehand? Who would be so cruel? I only came up with one name… Mother Nature.

The movement of their two bodies provoked a sand storm that blurred out all the action. At that precise moment, I really felt like a Roman citizen waiting for the towering cloud of sand of the arena to go away after a hard, maybe fatal, blow. When the image became clear again, there was just one male in the scenario, the defeated one had run off. The applauses and the screaming of the spectators were up next, but I realized, apart from me, no one was applauding, no one was watching them; not even the sockeye female they were fighting for. No one was looking at them because that was not a spectacle to entertain people, as the gladiator shows were. Both, gladiators and salmon males, were fighting for survival, but because of two whole different causes. The first ones were trying to survive to stay alive during 20 or 30 more years, while the others were trying to survive to stay alive enough time to mate, 9 minutes would be more than enough (chromometer in hand). Their proximate goal was the same, yet their ultimate goal was totally different.

I took off the scarf while trying not to lose sight of the scene. One salmonid gladiator and a female mating; I blinked once, and the scene was over. That’s it. That is what he had fought to death for, his ultimate goal. And, after that? Death—waiting in peace, as his flesh gets rotten, his systems shut down slowly and he ends up at the bottom of the river serving as a resource of nutrients for the ecosystem. Both, the gladiator and the salmon, fought to get something in return yet their motives were heads and tails of a coin—one fought to keep his pride untouched, while the other fought to keep his genes down to future generations (this is actually the purpose of what we call salmon run).

I was witnessing the wise, cruel even vile Mother Nature pulling on her transparent marionette strings. I was witnessing the power that innate instincts have and how buried inside humans have them albeit some of us let them free more often. Brutal. That was the word.

“Excuse me, can you take a picture of us, please?” a little wrinkled man with sunglasses and a very expensive phone said to me as he got closer. Immediately, I was brought back to Earth. I nodded my head and as I took the picture, I tried to focus the camera on the river and the sockeye salmon. But the woman with a noticeable hump next to him shouted at me as nicely as possible “make sure we all fit in the picture, dear”. “We”, I knew instantly, meant the eight people standing in front of me, not the hundreds or even thousands of sockeye salmon in the stream. As I clicked the button on the screen I couldn’t help wonder what the difference between this picture and one in another park was, if not for the salmon.

The sockeye salmon was cropped out from the picture and from that place. Are we really that cruel, that self-centered? Two different types of cruelty, I guess; but at least, one type of cruelty was going to serve for more than likes on a social network. Cruelty…

I went back to my spot, the cold made me put the scarf back on around my neck and I let myself bury in my thoughts… Sockeye salmon, as well as other species, lives to procreate; they pass on their genes or at least they try and then, they die. They don’t have any time to spare and if they decide to waste it, it is more than probable that they will die without any offspring, without having contributed to their species, useless. However, sockeye salmon is the species with the most powerful instincts and strength I have ever witnessed, just as Achilles; the way they hang on to their lives until the very last minute, without eating, is heroic. “The Marvel Super Heroes” of under water.

Mother Nature set them up as machines capable of surviving the enough amount of time to make sure a cycle is completed and that another starts. The masterpiece She has created is brilliant—breathtaking. Adams River is the nest for hundreds or maybe thousands of gladiators and other village people of ancient Rome (including adult females, alevins, sockeye fry and smolts and myself), an each one of them live under the rules of the fearsome emperor. Mother Nature. Individuals may die and be replaced by others, the genes manifested within a population may change over generations—yet, She remains the same. No one, not a single living being has had the courage to face that old woman pulling on the strings. Well, not until Homo sapiens sapiens appeared.

Humans have developed the ability to control their instincts and act independently from what She orders. As we well know, the Roman Empire fell a long time ago (at least for human civilizations). Humans don’t live their lives with the same ultimate goal as salmon (to pass on the genes to next generations), not anymore. Nowadays, humanity’s only goal is to live life to the fullest and the longest possible—what Mother Nature put as a top priority has now become a choice.

A 35-year-old woman has no children; therefore, her genes won’t be passed on to the next generation—natural. A 5-year-old sockeye female may lay between 2.000-5.000 eggs before she dies—natural. Have women’s biological clock stopped ticking? What happened to our animal instincts? Why have we stopped contributing to our own species, to our own existence? When did we start running away from her? 

Well, I guess the answer to all these questions is that we, humans, believe that we don’t depend on her anymore, rather the opposite; we think her existence depends on us and that’s why we come up every year with new conservation laws and other projects to try save a little tiny piece of her. Our world’s anthropocentric point of view and our arrogance don’t let us trust her, and more important, we don’t let our lives in her hands, we tried to escape from her with all the resources at hand, until the inevitable comes—death. Death is the ending of a life cycle and it’s just as natural as birth. The Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Mayas, and so on… for all these cultures, death was part of the journey of life, part of their nature. And this is applicable for salmon; for salmon, death is just another natural event.

But, Mother Nature, for modern society, has now become more a bad figure like the vile emperor of the Roman Empire, than a good figure like Demeter (from ancient Greek religion) or Ceres (from ancient Roman religion), the goddess of agriculture, harvest, growth, who presided over the fertility of the earth. That’s why the little wrinkled man and the woman with a noticeable hump asked me for a picture of themselves, without the salmon, without the nature…

Despite all that, like it or not, we still play under her rules—she still controls our strings. And, we all know what happens if we pull of the strings very hard—they break; and, if they break… well, if they break, there is nothing holding us back from extinction.

1546 words

Literature cited:

Greek Mythology [Internet]. 2018. Demeter. Greek Mythology: greekmythology.com ; [cited 2018 Oct 21]. Available from: https://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Demeter/demeter.html

The wise old owl

E

dward Richards wrote, “A wise old owl sat on an oak; the more he saw the less he spoke; the less he spoke the more he heard; why aren’t we like that wise old bird?”—I sometimes ask myself this question, too. I sometimes think that I underestimate my five senses, that by talking or shouting I will connect better with the surroundings. But that is simply not true.

During the day, the performance of my senses is not too high: avoid falling down the stairs or crashing with a car, enabling me to assimilate all the knowledge that is being taught in class and savoring all the foods I put in my mouth, are the most basic jobs they have among others. During the night, it is a completely different thing. During the night each one of them increases its performance. Each one of them are enhanced and that allows me to appreciate the night. The pupils increase in size, in order to let more light in, so that I can differentiate figures and shades, such as Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine figures. Hearing gains accuracy so low-frequency sounds can be heard clearly. The skin becomes more fragile, so any little touch of an unknown object puts me on alert, and the same happens with smell and taste. These adaptations to darkness are accompanied with the release of adrenaline to the bloodstream which results in euphoria and excitement—and, I would like to think that that is why owls become alive at night, because the enhancement of their senses brings them to a state of euphoria and excitement that cannot be achieved when the sun is up.

That night, in the cold dark Kamloops, I felt like I was a wise old owl. We started our night walk from Lac Le Jeune road and diverted into the forest. I was the last ant in the line as we were climbing up the hill in between of Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine shades, maybe because I was stopping every five steps to observe my surroundings or maybe because I was so amazed by nature in the dark that I couldn’t walk faster. The light, emitted by the headlights, diminishing and the distant chatter warned me that I was getting too far from the group.

After eleven loops I was already on the top of the hill looking towards the city and all its artificial light. The cold had been increasing its toughness as we were getting higher and higher, but now it was at its maximum, or was it?... I wasn’t sure if it had gotten colder or it was my sense of touch that had increased its sensitivity. But either way, I liked it because I felt connected with the nature somehow, like I belonged there.

Sitting down in a rock, once again, I drew what my brain was able to capture of that dark but beautiful image; and as I did, I couldn’t help wonder why humans normally relate dark with bad things, with ugliness. I guess it’s because at night time we become vulnerable and powerless, and I know how bad we want to be the one with the power and control. Nonetheless, I have always enjoyed the night, I have always enjoyed the connection between me, my senses and the surroundings, and last but not least I have always enjoyed its beauty. Its inexplicable beauty. That you don’t see doesn’t mean that you cannot look…

And for that, I admire and aspire to be like that wise old bird Edward Richards once described.

Am I a migratory bird?

O

n December 2018 it’ll be a year that I am 8,353 km away from home. At the same time, a North American Arctic tern will have flown 5 times that distance and a Blackpoll Warbler will have flown 6,000 km from the wintering grounds (Puerto Rico, Lesser Antilles, and northern parts of South America) to the breeding grounds (New Brunswick in Canada and other places in the United States). As a matter of fact, these later little birds fly non-stop over an average of 62 hours, up to 3 days, which would be the same as to flight from Kamloops to Barcelona 6 times. Isn’t that a miracle? It’s no surprise to me that aircrafts were designed based on these marvelous and extraordinary creatures.

As Matt was relating extraordinary stories about migration and birds, I kept on thinking about the journey migratory birds take year after year—do they miss home? do they even know where home is?... Yes, of course they know where home is,  because they return every year to breed. Something inside their tiny bodies is connected with that piece of land where they were born, and it turns on every spring—call it home, call it Mother Nature but something calls them to return. And this mechanism, this genetic program, is the responsible for their migratory restlessness.

Whilst the class was almost at its end, more thoughts and questions didn’t cease to pop up in my mind. Do I have the same innate program? Is someone trying to call me home? Am I like E.T.?... I might have a similar innate program that enables me to know where my home is but I sure don’t have all the other mechanisms that make migratory birds so efficient; for me, stars are shiny dots in the sky made out of gas and plasma (a superheated state of matter composed of subatomic particles), yet for them, stars take part in a bigger map which they can follow to get home (the magnetic field, sun compass, spatial orientation and experiences cues are crucial components of the map, too).

Friedrich Nietzsche once said “Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says ‘All for me’ is a horror to us”—yet I think that is not the absolute truth. We, humans, believe in the superiority of our species because our capacity to reason, however Mother Nature didn’t only create one admirable feature; there are plenty of others which are worth worshiping, for instance the capacity of restlessness of birds. If we are the super-species in the “brain capacity and ability to construct things” field, birds are the super-species in the “physical resistance and lack of laziness” field. Laziness… or may be referred as Sloth (one of the seven deadly sins) is a behavioral trait that birds lack and modern human society has it in abundance; a bird that doesn’t weight more than 20 g flies from Barcelona to Moscow non-stop for 3 days, yet I can’t walk to university because walking less than an hour it requires too much energy. It is to be embarrassed and ashamed. I am ashamed of my laziness.

There is still a question that remains unanswered: am I considered a migrant?... I don’t have the answer for this question myself, but one thing I’m sure about—our understanding of migration has nothing to do with bird migration. They are the true migrants.