“There’s no telling who will be there.”

This morning, as I swam, I was humming (between breaths) “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz”. I don’t know why. It came to mind, into mind, and somehow it felt right as I stroked from one group of cedars to the other, and back. Far away a paddleboarder. A slight haze from forest fires beyond the mountains. A very modest Fata Morgana effect meant that the two young mergansers were levitating just beyond where I was swimming and I wondered if they were part of that first group we saw at the end of May, 17 tiny ducklings darting around their mum. How could there be so many, we wondered. And reading about mergansers later, I discovered that clutches are 3-17 eggs so this was a peak achievement on the part of the mum.

Who were this morning’s mergansers? One day we saw a mother with two ducklings. Another morning we saw a family of six. Mergansers haunt the shoreline in their search for food and I think of the weasels and mink, the hungry raccoons, the eagles flying low over the lake all summer. The two this morning came from different directions, meeting and levitating and then parting again.

At the Brand New Tennessee Waltz
You’re literally waltzing on air

A couple of weeks ago, we paused on the highway on our way back home after the swim to let a family of Canada geese cross the road. The adult at the front of the line looked both ways and then purposefully crossed, followed by ten juvenile goslings, and another adult bringing up the rear. No one got out of line. In the screenshot of the mergansers (blurry, I know!), you can see a baby riding the mother’s back. It hopped off and another hopped on. The others were moving in every direction, all at once. That two, or six, might have survived the summer seems like a miracle.

So have all your passionate violins
Play a tune for a Tennessee kid
Who’s feeling like leaving another town
But with no place to go if he did
Cause they’ll catch you wherever you’re hid

This morning, as I swam, humming “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz”, I was trying not to think of the burning world. All night I woke from dreams about fire, places I’ve loved in flame, fire coming down mountains, through dense forests, embers flying across water. Long lines of cars fleeing Yellowknife, Kelowna, the Shuswap. I hear the Kelowna firechief’s terse comment in a news conference yesterday: “We fought 100 years worth of fires all in one night.” I’ve become that person, the one who says quietly that our species is doomed. No one knows what to do. I don’t. I swim, I hum tragic old songs, I get up in the night to work on a new essay about this climate emergency and war, I change the sheets on all the beds in the house so that those arriving tonight, and tomorrow night, will at least have a nice place to sleep.

At the Brand New Tennessee Waltz
You’re literally waltzing on air
At the Brand New Tennessee Waltz
There’s no telling who will be there

Note: lyrics from Jesse Winchester’s “Brand New Tennessee Waltz”.