The Season of the Wood Duck

“When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief."

These lines from Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” describe some of the mixed feelings we shared as we embarked on the beginning of what we have been calling our "adult gap year" (at the end of a summer that we could call "the season of the wood duck") on the banks of Pinchot Lake. We chose Pinchot, the state park closest to our home and one of our regular walking places, as a place to practice being in our new camper home.

Fittingly, our first night in the camper was the first night/day of the fall semester, and we approached the trip as methodically as a class, taking notes about what we did and did not need (and what we might want in the future); gathering information from seasoned campers; and sharing our excitement with other new campers, in tents and all varieties of recreational vehicles and trailers. (We met a lovely family from Baltimore, on their first tent camping trip, whose nine-year-old eldest son just might be a famous nature writer someday. We had fun lending out our binoculars and following his discoveries of the moment.)

Although our gap year started at the figurative start of fall, with back to school and Labor Day imminent, the season of the wood duck began in early spring. Our pastor, Lynn, read Berry’s poem at the end of his last sermon before a three-month sabbatical, starting in March. Less than a week later, we saw our first wood drake at McCormick Park, our favorite walking spot along the Yellow Breeches. As all wood drakes are, he was a fairy tale specimen, and our ecstatic reaction was the same as if we had stumbled into Narnia and spotted a mythical faun. This sighting kicked off a season of wood drake sightings: mama and papa feeding along the far bank where the skunk cabbage grows, mama with ducklings on their first practice run in the rapids and over rocks, the growing ducklings under the mulberry tree at the bank by the road (they startled and skimmed across the creek every time we passed), and the full grown young who stayed on later than the rest.

On the third day of our practice camping trip, we took a walk on the Lakeside Trail from our campsite to the Conewago Day Use Area. During our first few days at the campsite, we had frequently seen and heard ospreys wheeling and landing nearby; we had heard the Eastern Wood-Pewee calling throughout the day; a barred owl's song tucked us in after dark; but we had not seen our favorite, the great blue heron. On the Lakeside Trail, there is a lookout point where both day-use areas can be seen, with the Conewago area around the next finger of the lake. As we stepped back from the lookout to continue on the trail, I expressed my surprise that we had not seen the heron yet, but that this was clearly a place it would love.

We continued to the Conewago Day Use area, and from there, we saw one female wood duck and helpful signage for water bird identification. As we left with the setting sun, facing the lookout from which we had come, Dean said, "Look, there! There it is!" He raised the binoculars to his eyes and sure enough, there was a heron in the spot that I had mentioned, preening before bed. When we reached the spot on the trail, I said, "That felt like a miracle just now." And Dean replied, "We have had a lot of miracles. There are miracles granted to us all of the time. We just need to be aware, with eyes to see them." As I reflect on these moments and Dean's insight, I am reminded of the last lines of Berry’s poem: “For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

We would love it if you would share with us a miracle, small or large, that you have seen recently. Or a time when you have rested in the grace of the world and felt free.

Peace and love ~ Vicki and Dean