Mirkwood

Three months ago, I spotted a solitary robin somewhere in the bare branches around Spy Pond. Ever since Stefanie confirmed in one of her comments that the American Robin is considered a harbinger of spring, I have been keeping an eye out for robins while walking to work. I take a short cut across a small lawn everyday, counting robins as I pass. In the past week alone, the number increased from 4 to 12 and then to 16. Today morning however, while birding at the Mount Auburn Cemetery, I found out just how paltry these numbers were.

There were robins everywhere, on the tombstones, near the (frozen) vernal pool, beside the lakes, in the trees and on the lawns. I didn’t count, but I think I might have seen 200 to 300 of them in two hours of walking there. Our Mass Audubon guide didn’t turn up, so the seven people who had assembled just started birding by themselves. Luckily for me, all the others had been to the cemetery before and came forth with all sorts of useful information - Where to look for warblers, where the hawks are likely to nest, which trees do the sapsuckers prefer, what to find in the vernal pools (fairy shrimp), how to distinguish a red oak from a white oak (red oak has more spiky leaves, white oak has rounded leaf edges) and so on.

There are tombstones of all shapes and sizes in Mt. Auburn, some with elaborate sculptures built over the prestigious dead. Some simply say “Mother” or “Father” or “Husband” or “Wife”, others are housed in little ornate stone rooms with stained glass windows. Even at 9:00 am, there were fresh flowers at some graves. I have never looked for birds in a cemetery before, and was advised to go there by J. H. of Newburyport, one of the most amazing birders I have met. Mt. Auburn is very large, and if it didn’t contain graves, it could have been an arboretum. There are willows and oaks and pines and sugar maples and empress trees and many other trees whose names I wish I knew.

The lack of foliage at this time of the year tells some stories; nests made by birds, which would otherwise be hidden in leaves, are now visible in plain sight. In the swaying, flimsy branches of the willows, there are intricately woven oriole nests from last year. It is a wonder, and a testament to the highly evolved weaving capabilities of the birds that the nests don’t topple or fall off altogether. Even the birds, now developing their striking spring plumages, are easier to see when they perch on the bare branches. Near the grave of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a cardinal sat in a bush posing for the prospective missus, apparently unafraid of seven binoculars trained at it from not very far away. Elsewhere, there were chickadees, blackbirds, titmice, woodpeckers and blue jays, their voices all joining in a disorderly symphony. There were nuthatches doing their weird upside-down descending acts on tree trunks. It was wonderful to see cedar waxwings again, brown and yellow, with their handsome hairdos and red accents. They are apparently extremely common here, though the last time I saw one was from my dorm apartment in California four years ago.

I got to see owl pellets for the first time, under a pine tree. From the looks of it, a great-horned owl had swallowed a vertebrate (most likely a mouse), and the bones were almost completely intact in the neat, dry pellet. We couldn’t locate the skull, but there were parts of a spine and intact femur bones tightly embedded in the hairy pellet, which was slightly larger than a flattened ping-pong ball. The bones were thin, white and not much longer than my thumbnail, and remarkably clean for something that had emerged from somebody’s posterior. It is no surprise that pellets are considered useful diagnostic tools to determine the food habits of owls and estimate the population of prey in the owl’s habitat.

One of the birders had a small thermometer that indicated 28 F. Cold weather, wind chill, and freezing rain returned this last week, but the sight of so many robins is encouraging, as is the appearance of extremely tiny buds on some branches. It is not much use complaining about the weather, but I find myself wanting to leave this winter behind.

“You en’t afraid, are you“

“Not yet. When I am, I shall master the fear.”

- Lyra and Iorek, The Golden Compass.

Fantasy stories, especially of the long, serialized variety often throw up characters with whom one cannot help being captivated. Not all of these are protagonists. Among the plethora of amazing - but predominantly male - characters in Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, there was Eowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan. In the delicate Earthsea books from Ursula Le Guin, there was the enigmatic dragon Kalessin. Now, in reading The Golden Compass - known in Europe as Northern Lights - I have become awestruck by the barely restrained force of nature that is Iorek Byrnison.

[In singing the praises of Iorek Byrnison, I am apt to reveal minor spoilers. However, you may rest assured, dear reader, that after reading this post, you won't have the faintest idea about what a golden compass is (Obviously, it is not a compass in the common sense), and what it is supposed to do ]

I am mildly surprised that I like Iorek so much, even though he is such a violent character, as I am a wimp in the action hero department. Generally, I cannot stomach the “action” sequences in action films, and tolerate them with difficulty in novels. I dislike simulated violence in computer games such as Halo, where the general idea seems to involve butchering all and sundry with great music to boot. Yet, when Iorek Byrnison slices open a poor seal, skins it and uses the blubber to lubricate his armor, I marveled as if it was an act of tenderness. A warrior-bear’s tenderness, but tenderness nevertheless.

There is nothing soothing about Iorek Byrnison, the armored bear of Svalbard; like the dragons of EarthSea, a human being would probably have two choices when faced with this filthy, smelly mountain of power: To talk to him, or to have one’s skull crushed like an egg between his jaws. From watching the trailer of the Golden Compass, one gets the slightly sanitized impression that Iorek Byrnison is a fearsome hulk with a heart of gold, but such is not the picture I gleaned from the novel. Pullman’s Iorek is a Pansebjorne to the core - an armored ice-bear who is fierce but neither good nor evil, silent but never sulky, solitary but never lonely, so bear-like that it is impossible not to love him for what he is. He takes no quarter and gives none. He will either repay a debt or die in the process. There are no half measures for Iorek Byrnison.

I was disappointed that the great ice-bear does not make an appearance in The Subtle Knife, the sequel to The Golden Compass, and is only referred to in conversation. Without a doubt, he will have a part to play before the trilogy concludes in The Amber Spyglass. I found the first book fascinating, the second only marginally less so. Pullman has weaved an eccentric but thoroughly captivating story that takes place in a fictional multiverse and presents several difficult and tantalizing questions, “What does it mean when someone refers to his or her soul?”, “Is belief in God tenable or is it a self-perpetrating illusion?”, “If we lived in a multiverse, would we be left with no choice other than moral relativism, or would it mean anything to have a morality?” I’m eager to read the last book but I feel exhausted this month and am inclined to wait until my workload eases somewhat before picking up this story again. When I am done, I hope to write a post that deals more with the books’ premise than with an isolated rave such as this.