Barry Lopez - A Reflection on White Geese

*The above image is of stuffed geese "in flight" at the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center.

In Barry Lopez's essay, A Reflection on White Geese, found in his book Crossing Open Ground, he introduced me to Tule Lake and what has become its National Wildlife Refuge.

This is a wildlife refuge that has been developed and maintained to house and manage waterfowl including ducks, snow geese, and ring necked pheasants. It may be the only place in the world with this incredible volume of snow geese, visitors can see over 300 geese in flight above the lake. At the refuge, time can be spent at the visitor's center, the bookstore, renting canoes and hunting waterfowl within the refuge. Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge advertises these activities along with seasonal viewing opportunities and lists nearby accomodations to stay overnight.

I'm not sure if I'm just naive or oblivious, but I had no idea that a place called a wildlife refuge happily welcomed hunting on its grounds. A place to take a scenic, hunting vacation. Maybe families go here at peak seasons as a destination? This is very intriguing to me. Intriguing is my new word for absurd.

Lopez states, "...it is ironic that the one place on earth a person might see these geese in numbers large enough to cover half the sky is, itself, a potential threat to their existence." (25) Due to agriculture and industry, snow geese in California have lost miles and miles of what once was their home, and that is why the refuge began. But by allowing hunting on the grounds the refuge is making it easier for hunters to hunt. The wildlife is contained in one space and the refuge gives maps to its hunting visitors which display prime locations on the refuge. Mentioned in the essay is the additional fact that many hunters, for whatever reason, shoot some animals and leave to them in the refuge, crippled, and to die of starvation.

Through speaking with Bob Fields, the refuge's manager, and biologist, Ed O'Neill, Lopez learns that "By carefully adjusting the length of the hunting season and the bag limits each year, and by planting food for the birds, refuge managers try to maintain large bird populations, in part to keep private hunting clubs along the flyway enthusiastic about continuing to provide additional habitiat for the birds...We preseve them principally to hunt them" (30-31)

In 1975 a group of Alaskan Eskimos who depend on the goose population for survival visited the Tule Lake Refuge to observe how it was managing the wildlife populations. They could not believe the volume of birds in one place, something they had never witnessed. They also could not believe the waste that hunters were creating, the abandoning of crippled geese, left to die on the refuge. Bob Fields had extensive talks with the Eskimos and "found himself talking with a kind of hunter he rarely encountered anymore - humble men with a respect for the birds and a sense of responsibility toward them." (34) Creating a space to "preserve" wildlife and still allowing hunters to hunt for sport does not invite the type of hunters who respect animals and who show a sensitivity and gratitiude which the animals deserve. This type of hunter does not hunt at a wildlife refuge.

From a conversation with Bob Fields, Lopez writes, "he is candid in expressing his distaste for a type of hunter he still meets too frequently - belligerent, careless people for whom hunting is simply violent recreation; people who trench out and rut the refuge's roads in oversize four-wheel-drive vehicles, who are ignorant of hunting laws or who delight in breaking them as a part of a "game" they play with refuge personnel." (35) Although there is a sense of compassion in the manager and others involved in the refuge, it is what it is. It is a space whose economic livelihood is earned from the staging of wildlife, membership fees for hunting, and its portrayal as a destination place.

Fields often basks in the beauty of the birds in the refuge. As I have seen hundreds of eagles in my grandmother's front yard in Homer, Alaska, I can imagine that seeing hundreds of snow geese in flight is a similar experience. This experience consists of a moment of awe, where words cannot be spoken. Where you want to be left with only the birds, a desire to keep your moment private from others. In Homer I took many solo walks along the ocean so that I could keep this experience to myself. Fields states, "I have known all along there was more to it than managing the birds so they could be killed by some macho hunter." (35) What is it? Is this completely selfish? Diminishing animals land further and further and creating a land "for them" for our enjoyment? Even if hunting wasn't allowed, this refuge was in part created for the birds to be contained so that we could experience their beauty, the awe that encaptures us when we see the grace of their movements, their chaotic, yet simultaneous flight above Tule Lake.

*The above image is of photographers and eagles in my grandma's front yard in Homer, Alaska.

Before agriculture, this land was inhabited by natives who used its resources to the fullest, who contributed to the life cycle of this land as hunter-gatherers. Now, "the hunters have become farmers, the farmers landowners. Their sons have gone to the cities and become businessmen, and the sons of these men have returned with guns, to take advantage of an old urge, to hunt. But more than a few come back with a poor knowledge of the birds, the land, the reason for killing. It is by now a familiar story, for which birds pay their lives." (38)

Lopez writes of the popular argument that geese populations need to be hunted for their own survival, to manage their population. He, in turn, argues that the snow goose breeding patterns fluctuate so intricately that it is not possible for humans to pinpoint their natural inclinations so precisely, to weave their way into the snow geese's ecology.

In conclusion, Lopez writes, "We must search in our way of life, I think, for substantially more here than economic expansion and continued good hunting. We need to look for a set of relationships similar to the ones Fields admired among the Eskimos. We grasp at what is beautiful in a flight of snow geese rising against an overcast sky as easily as we grasp the beauty in a cello suite; and intuit, I believe, that if we allow these things to be destroyed or degraded for economic or frivilous reasons we will become deeply and strangely impoverished." (38)

This essay has helped me to delve even deeper into my grandmother's story. Images I have seen of the geese at Lake Tule remind me of images I have taken in my grandmother's front yard. The volume of eagles was breathtaking and a very emotional experience for me. As my grandmother fed the eagles each morning, she was not doing so for any sort of financial gain. She was not hunting or allowing others to hunt them. She was not vacationing. She was living her life in the home that she loved. She did not earn a penny from living her life. She was just doing what she knew and what life dealt to her. She welcomed every last photographer into her home so she could share a piece of her life and of the eagles lives with them. I believe that grandma wanted to show people that these birds were more than just symbols, more than just a magnificent sight. Grandma knew they had complicated lives of their own and she just wanted to nourish them. Grandma never even spoke of these emotional experiences that I had when I saw the hundreds of birds in flight. She just did what she did as if it was her duty in life. It was what she was supposed to do and therefore, she woke up each winter morning and fed the eagles.



*The above image is of eagles in my grandmother's front yard in Homer, AK.