Il Faut Amarrer ton Coeur

When I worked at Acadiana Park I was outside for the better part of 365 days per earthly orbit. Watching the world change in phases as weeks went by and then recycle with each passing year, I couldn’t help but measure time in a different way. Instead of Gregorian Decembers and Mays and Junes, my mind saw the months as they were presented by Nature, an Acadian Calendar of sorts that matched the reality of south Louisiana much more accurately than the duodecimal year portioned into four seasons.

In the natural calendar there were distinct times of year as descriptive as the Revolutionary Calendar: Lyreleaf Sage, Live Oak Flower, Pecan Flower, Buttercup and Yellowtop, First Cold Front, to name a few. Those of you who’ve spent enough time outdoors and know the names of what you’re looking at surely grasp the evocative significance of those names, and how one time morphs into—or even overlaps with--another.

Having enjoyed the safety and sanctity of my own yard for close to two months now with so many daylight hours spent outdoors, the sense of a natural calendar has returned to me. Note that I don’t think of those two months as confinement. There’s a saying, “We shape our houses, and then they shape us.” I’ve had years to build a yard that suits my soul, and it has. My yard not only shapes me, it’s taken a role in reshaping my natural calendar.

It helps that I’ve had good company at home. Someone once told me the key to domestic tranquility was compatibility; “Forget the bedroom; find someone you can share a bathroom with for the rest of your life.” In a small house with a small yard, vir et uxor and their college refugee have had no issues with being on the safe side of the wall. One gratifying detail is that my wife has explored the yard like never before, and has been amazed to learn that everywhere she looks, there’s a different type of bloom. Validation feels nice. I’ve planned well, and planted well.

Over the past two month-months, I’ve seen the pages of the natural calendar morph from Lyreleaf Sage to Pecan Flower with a few months in between, each with sacred holidays such as Hummingbird Day, Chimney Swift Day, and Mississippi Kite Day.

Now we’re entering a time that I could call Young Male Redstart where the house lights of spring are definitely dimming in a gentle reminder that summer is about to take the stage. What few migrants are trickling through at this point (aside from empids that’ll pass through largely unseen) are tilted heavily to tail-end laggards like first-year males. Young male redstarts get my nod for naming rights because they’re so conspicuous and their age is so easy to pinpoint.

By the time the trickle of young males has mostly ended, atmospheric summer will hit full bore. Then there’ll be a few weeks of Baked Stillness before Saint Medard plays dealer’s choice to see which natural months come before Ripe Fig.      

Time is passing and a bit more will pass like this. Hopefully things will improve by the time the last redstarts are passing though, but “On va voir,” we will see. This has been a year like no other for me. In any other year for the past several decades, I would have made close to twenty trips to Cameron Parish in the amount of time I’ve spent home. This year, however, my commitment is to humanity.

My commitment is to be "un homme de service," a man of service, a term that I always heard used with the greatest respect by my elders, and that I hope I can live up to.

I never thought I’d live in a year ending in 20, and I hope I’m gone before the year ending in 30, but I think most people want to hang on to life and savor it, and we owe that to them. The only way to pay our due is to extinguish the threat. To snuff a candle, we can cover it with a jar. Deprived of oxygen, the fire dies out. Covering the candle only partway might weaken the fire, but the fire stays alive, ready to spring back stronger than before if the jar is lifted.

This threat could have and should have been snuffed out long ago.

Humans come in two types, those who keep it simple, and those who complicate things. The simplest way to snuff this flame would have been to put the jar down tightly at the beginning and to keep the jar down until the last of the smoke had cleared.

That would have been simple. But remember, some people complicate things.

I find it hard to believe that everyone that’s been burned by this flame has been careless. More likely they were careful and just unlucky. When complications enter the picture, luck does too.

Early on, a fellow birder congratulated me on getting so much free time due to school closure during migration to go to the coast. I was a bit taken aback by the callousness of that remark made while my Italian friends sheltered-in-place against death and people like my mother that belong to high-risks groups were feeling the fear of the same happening here. I told him I’d play it by ear, and that hopefully the closures would slow things down.

Things have slowed, but not enough, because people enabled them to keep burning.

My mother says that during World War II there were stickers inside of cars that read, “Is this trip necessary?” We need those now. In the way that children twist their moms’ words to fit their own desires, people twisted the concept of essential items and the fact that hikes were allowed to mean that driving 200 or more miles round trip, stopping for gas and the restroom, and then walking around for a couple of hundred yards watching birds was within the reason of the order.

What started off as a few reckless adventurers wandering forth and posting pictures of their finds was too much for others to bear. If he can do it, it must be OK, right?

Now I’m reading about groups going birding (or fishing, or hiking) and crowds at hotspots. That’s not exactly slamming the jar down over the fire.

Every trip comes with a risk of bad luck. How many travelers can’t change a flat by themselves? How many people unconsciously wipe their gloved hands across their noses while they’re filling their cars? How clean is the seat on that toilet for those that don’t go behind a tree?

Sure, these are small risks. But multiply small risks by the tens of thousands of people taking them and you’ll see why the number of cases refuses to shrink to zero. It’s math; it’s logic; it’s science. It’s not one guy’s cranky opinion and yours “just happens to be different, thank you very much.”

You may not like to hear it, but if your best response is that you’re practicing social distancing 100 miles from your house when you could be at your house instead, you’re not a part of the solution. It’s that simple; let’s not complicate it. What you want is not as important as what everyone needs.

So that time of year that I've dubbed Young Male Redstart is here, and it'll end around the time the numbers are studied again and a new decision is made about whether we can lift the jar safely. If the call is made to keep the jar down, it won’t be government’s fault. It will be We The People that the government has to babysit.

If people find something to complain about, let's hope that they aren’t the people whose complications have dragged this thing out for the rest of us. After all, what do those people have to complain about? Not having been able to sit in a restaurant while they were driving all over the state?

On va voir, chère. On va voir.