Start Singing, Don’t Stop (on Frogs, Caribou, and Homo Sapiens)
River playing soccer, me hiking on one of my Wednesdays off (best tradition ever!), harvesting saffron from our crocuses, Mom at the No Kings protest, River cleaning apples during another canning spree, and Brad cooking his Mamaw’s boiled and browned taters.
By the time you read this blog post, our trunk will have already been packed with cold-weather gear, as we headed out for a long weekend of camping in Great Smokies National Park. The maple trees are bare and the oaks are fluttering orange prayers into the wind. It’s autumn, and we selected a camping spot in the isolated Cataloochie Valley, to see the elk rut and sleep beneath the shadows of ridgelines. No cell service, plenty of hiking and biking, and lots of Uno, s’mores, and snuggle time in our family tent. In other words, just what this post-No-Kings protestor needed to settle the nervous system and breathe with the Earth again.
Most folks aren’t aware that elk are native to North Carolina, though it’s been over two hundred years since they thrived in the Appalachian Mountains. Twenty-five years ago, 52 elk were brought to North Carolina from western Kentucky and Alberta, Canada. Today, the herds thrive in reasonable and sustainable ways with little conflict between humans (landowners and tourists, alike).
When I was a little girl, my parents took three weeks off from their high-powered city jobs in Portland so we could travel as a family from Oregon as far north as British Columbia, hiking and camping as we went. Our stops included the Olympic Peninsula, where elk herds thundered through old growth regularly, their buff rumps appearing and disappearing against a backdrop of mosses, ferns, and nurse logs. Seeing them move was a full-body experience — vibrational, awe-inspiring, humbling, epic.
Years later, I would learn about the Great Caribou Migration in Alaska, and it’s still on my life list of experiences to seek. Maybe taking my son just a few hours from home – for now – will be enough to ignite a similar longing. Whether elk or caribou, a salmon run or any other natural display of species on the move, I want River to care enough about the future so that his choices today make way for these species tomorrow.
Watching that video of caribou, linked above (it’s only 24 seconds; give it a gander), I can’t help but compare it to the species that also gathered in large crowds last weekend for the largest mass-protest in American history. Look at how we moved – people, a species capable of as much hope as destruction – and tell me you don’t see the connection. In that video (also short; only 52 seconds), I see a street party of people migrating across the bridge I learned to drive on, hands trembling over the gear shift, at age fifteen. Two years later, my friend’s mother would leap to her death from that bridge. If she could have stopped time – waited thirty years on the precipice of that railing – would the inflatable frogs and solidarity have persuaded her that hope was not a fool’s dream? Will it persuade those holding political office, today?
As Heather Cox Richardson asked in her powerful Substack, Letters from an American, “How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the Administration’s attempt to get rid of the democratic system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against Federal Agents?” She goes on, quoting scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan:
“Large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments…Every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo…[Such rallies] bring together multigenerational groups and the playfulness can help create enthusiasm for big tent politics against the monoculture of fascism…The frogs (and unicorns and dinosaurs) will be defining ideographs of this period of struggle.”
May this species keep marching. And striking. And boycotting. And protecting. And speaking up. May we move with the fluidity and the birthright of the caribou. Some of us will die along the way; some already have. The herd will keep going, determined, doing what it knows must be done.
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