Trois Pèlerinages (Three Pilgrimages) - Part 2

The original reason for our trip north was to visit Cap Tourmente, staging area for the annual migration of snow geese. On Saturday morning we rose early, ate a hearty Quebecois breakfast at our B&B, and set off for the national wildlife preserve about thirty minutes to the north of St-Anne-de-Beaupre. 

This rough panorama doesn't begin to do justice to the beauty of the Cap Tourmente landscape. The peak of fall color had arrived, and the weather on Saturday was perfect. Behind us, stretching around to the left, were more tall rock faces covered with deciduous forest. By contrast, the floodplain of the St. Lawrence - the river lies horizontally in the center of the photograph - is very flat.  Cap Tourmente contains salt marshes full of bulrushes, the favorite food of the snow geese, and it has been the historic gathering place for the flocks as they come down from their arctic nesting areas on the way to Chesapeake Bay. Partly because of preservation efforts such as this beautiful, pristine preserve (not a souvenir to be seen) - the snow goose population that comes here every year has grown from endangered levels to more than 1 million. A limited hunt to control the population is now allowed in Quebec.

When I first heard about this place last year, from the same friends we traveled with last weekend, I immediately wanted to go. I have... a thing about snow geese. (Forgive me, longtime readers - I've told this story before.)

When I was young the appearance of just one snow goose on the lake was a reason to get out the binoculars and call all the neighbors; when a small flock arrived one year the local people all drove to the cornfields along the river hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare visitors to the central New York flyway, clustered in the middle of a flock of their larger brown Canadian cousins. Something about their graphic whiteness, set off by that triangle of black wingtip, seemed to epitomize for me their arctic origin and their rare beauty. But it's not as individual birds that they most move me, it's something about seeing them as a flock.

It wasn't until the late eighties when we began to see more each year. In 1990 my maternal grandfather died the day after Thanksgiving. It was the first death of someone close to me, and though he had been becoming more and more transparent in his 90th year, he died suddenly and unexpectedly. My husband and I received the call just after we'd returned to Vermont; we immediately turned around and went back.

After the funeral I walked down by the lake where he and I had fished on so many evenings, tears now running down my face as I tried to come to terms with his absence. It was late afternoon, and the large flocks of migrating Canada geese that rested on our lake during those weeks before it froze were returning from their day grazing in the nearby cornfields. I stopped to watch them make their descent, wings wide to catch the cupped air, legs outstretched: one, ten, fifty. I looked down at the water's edge, and saw an unusually bright, white, round piece of quartz. I picked it up and suddenly, impulsively, threw it as far out into the water as I could. Following the arc of the stone, I looked up into the sky and saw a shimmering flash of silver high above me - and then watched, stunned, the tears drying on my face, as an entire flock of snow geese slowly wheeled and descended into the middle of the lake like an apparition, or, as it seemed to me, a passage between worlds.

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Although this past weekend is the normal peak of the snow goose migration, few flocks have left their nesting grounds so far because of the continued warmth of the weather in the far north, and the promised thousands and thousands of geese at Cap Tourmente were not to be seen. A steady stream of hopeful bird-loving pilgrims arrived anyway in the parking lot throughout the morning, carrying a range of effects from children and sandwiches to impressive amounts of optical aids and high-tech camera gear.

After a twenty-minute walk on boardwalk that wound through the tidal marshes to a specially-constructed blind, we did see several flocks rising and settling over the river. We also watched two heavy wooden sleds slowly pulled through the grasses by splashing, strong work horses, the last vestiges in Quebec of "la chasse traditionnelle" - a traditional hunting method for transporting hunters and their guide. In the blind and on the trail, the human visitors were quiet, looking into the distance through their own binoculars or the mounted scopes provided, explaining about the geese in whispers to their curious children and lifting them up so they could get their first look at something special, something that mattered to them.

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Faucon pèlerin, reads the French description birds one might see at Cap Tourmente. Peregrine falcon. I'd never really made the linguistic connection in English until I thought back to the Cafe Pèlerin at St-Anne-de-Beaupre...; peregrination doesn't mean quite the same thing as pelerinage.

Did birds first teach us about the possibility of pilgrimage, as we wondered where they went each year? Or does their migration awaken in us our own innate restlessness and desire? The leap or pang in the heart at the call of the flocks passing far overhead is, I think, something more than joy or melancholy about the passage of seasons, though for us northerners there is certainly that.

My own inarticulateness, in the face of the emotions the geese arouse in me, tells me I'm in the place that contains fire and the great waterfalls; the sound of the hermit thrush and the flash of a school of bright minnows; a silent shaft of sun on moss in a dark woodland. The snow geese fly in that space of porosity between myself and the rest of nature, following a map imprinted in my own marrow, a route stretching forward beyond language, and back to a time before tongues.

--

Here is J.'s CAP TOURMENTE PORTFOLIO.

Next: Messiaen and a journey within.

Comments

[dale]

(o)

[Jena]

Snow geese. And in this landscape. Further North, wider-open spaces than I have ever seen. Wow. How beautiful. How magical. Thank you (and J for the other photos)

[anasalwa]

beth,
I love your beautiful descripiton,"...as an entire flock snow geese slowly descended into the middle of the lake like an apparition, or as it seemed to me a passage between worlds."
Last Saturday during my morning run, when I stopped to tie my shoe lace, I heard their voices in the sky, when I looked up, it was the exact of switching the pilot moment. The sixth goose in the left of V shape flew to the front to take a pilot position. The fifth goose took the sixth spot, the fourth took the fifth, the third took the fourth, the second took the third and the former pilot slid into a second spot. It took my breath way watching their smooth transition. I realized I had stopped breathing when I gasped for air.

[kat]

How lovely. I've thought too of the peregrine and pilgrimages and the road between them. (I had written "pilgrims" but realized that, like most Americans, my image of pilgrims is largely constrained to Europeans in funny hats and far removed from any conception of pilgrimages. How much our grade schooling shapes our lives!)

[ps pirro]

Wonderful story to wake up to this morning. And good questions to ponder all day... Thank you!

[marja-leena]

Amazing story of the appearance of the snow geese after your grandfather's death! I can see how that would make the snow geese special for you, worthy of a pilgrimage to see them. I love your last paragraph, and J's photos.

[Dave]

Enjoyed hearing the apparition story again in this new context. It takes a great writer to weave a compelling essay around a missed quarry! Peter Mathiesson is one of my favorite prose writers, and I think the Snow Leopard sticks in my mind more than any of his other books.

[Natalie]

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[john]

'A route stretching forward beyond language, and back to a time before tongues'reminded me of the great ending of 'A River Runs Through it'
Hard to imagine higher praise than that

[Rana]

My own inarticulateness, in the face of the emotions the geese arouse in me, tells me I'm in the place that contains fire and the great waterfalls; the sound of the hermit thrush and the flash of a school of bright minnows; a silent shaft of sun on moss in a dark woodland. The snow geese fly in that space of porosity between myself and the rest of nature, following a map imprinted in my own marrow, a route stretching forward beyond language, and back to a time before tongues.

*appreciative sigh*

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Next month I am going to go see sandhill cranes. I am very much looking forward to it.