Arctic Dreams

by Barry Lopez

One fall afternoon a friend, an ornithologist, was counting migrating birds near Demarcation Bay on the north coast of Alaska, at a place called Pingokralik. On several tundra ponds he was also following the progress of three or four families of red-throated and arctic loons. Loons are unable to walk on land, and they require plenty of open water for taking off. Early in September, when the red-throated loon chicks were barely half their parents’ size, the coast was buffeted by snow squalls. Within a few days the tundra ponds were frozen over. My friend emerged from his tent one morning to find a red-throated loon and its chick paddling about energetically in an effort to maintain a small patch of open water. The other parent, which had spent the night at sea, flew by every half hour or so with food in its beak, but it could no more land than the other bird could take off. The next day it warmed up enough so the pondbound adult could take off and the other bird could land with food for the chick. The loons—there were other families in similar straits nearby—persevered in this manner, even as the human observer was driven off to a more permanent shelter. He did not know the fate of the loon chicks (the adults may well have abandoned them). What he remembers seeing were the adults flying back and forth strongly from the sea, dark spots fading in the snow squalls. Resolute, even in the face of poor timing. Successful animals.