Author: Wayne

‘Hope is a thing with feathers’. Dr. Howl shares parallel worlds in his latest lockdown piece

The nest is empty now, its wide platform of sticks and leaves vacant, bare of feather, talon and beak; around the sides and in the middle a few bones remain, the discarded lives of mice, moles, something larger, growing brittle and white under the mid-summer sun. 

I started following the Decorah Eagle’s nature cam in early March – remember life back then? A time of Covid fears—uncertainty growing like the numbers infected—businesses shuttered, travel plans cancelled, the world moving inward, the future unknown. 

In these anxious times finding the website was a ‘beautiful discovery’, its peep into the live world of two nesting American bald-eagles offering up respite from my outside world. There, on the centre of my computer screen, sat a tall and stoic eagle, attentive and alive, sheltering three eggs beneath its puffed out chest. Something solid and firm, with focus and a clear mission. Too easily I was hooked. 

Over the next three months, from March to now, my life has followed two parallel paths. One a pandemic journey, the virus blasting through Italy and Spain—in Washington, the ‘powers that be’ denying and gargling blench— New Zealand in lockdown, Britain differing. The other an eyrir-world with two clear tasks at hand: hatching and raising three eagle chicks.

The first few weeks were the time of the eggs, the eagle pair taking it in turn to keep the three white ovals warm and dry. Back in my Covid world I was storing up food, converting currency into small nominations, and working with a district governor to setup an emergency clinic, the pair of us pondering where we might store the bodies. 

In mid-April the eggs gave way to chicks, the cam showing three balls of fragile and sleepy fluff one mid-week morning, the hatchlings looking small and naked amongst the sticks and detritus of their tree-top home. 

In my parallel world Khmer friends, jobless for two months, wondered how they would repay their micro-loans whilst, across at the temples where their ancestors once stood, the grounds were eerily quiet – Angkor reclaimed by a spirit of stillness. 

By late May the three eaglets—they had all survived—were looking much stronger; acting like preening teenagers, tired of the nest and wanting to break free; but novices to flight, unable to do so. 

Until last week that is when, after a few days away I clicked on the eagle site wondering, as the Mac wheel spun around, what I might find. The answer: nothing! Not a bird in sight. My eagles had flown.

My feelings? Firstly sad and disappointed but then something else, a measure of relief and joy that the eggs of March had endured; and that the seeds they once held were now soaring over the plains and hills of Iowa, terrorizing rodents, rabbits, voles and whatever else befalls their keen raptor eye. 

Meanwhile back in my native Aotearoa June has brought a different relief; a semblance of normality returning inside the nation’s borders. People are standing next to each other and shaking hands without fear; touching, hugging and kissing (not too much of the latter, it is still a country of emotional restraint). 

This weekend rugby will return to the nation’s stadiums; crowds once again assembling before stages of grass and dramas of strength and agility. I imagine that the grounds will be full, each game—in a very Kiwi way—a celebration of having passed through the Covid eye. 

And just this once I wish I could be there. 

So in this moment I feel happiness and gladness for my birth place and the eagles of Decorah. And to those here to read this, I am glad for you too. 

Kia haumaru

Dr. Howl

Today HOWL presents its esteem awards for the most interesting media headlines and bylines from these ‘Covid times’.

‘Justice of a Poetic Kind’ Award:

Shopper who used team to stockpile $10k of toilet paper, sanitiser refused refund

RNZ, 16^thApril 2020

Puns: ‘Oh dear’ Award

Selfish surfer’s behavior far from swell

Stuff, 16^thApril 2020

The ‘Not Keep Calm and Carry On’ Award

‘Shambles, chaos, ridiculous’: what the UK papers say about Covid-19 testing

Guardian, 2^ndApril

‘Interesting Question’ Award

Coronavirus: Where will be the last place to catch Covid-19?

BBC.COM > News

‘You Should Never Bake Your Covid Heroes’ Award

New Zealand TV presenter ‘deeply sorry’ for her disturbing Jacinda Ardern cake

Guardian, 16^thApril

The ‘Say What!’ Award

Coronavirus: German zoo may feed animals to each other

Stuff 16th April

‘The Purr-fect Headline’ Award

You can’t leave that lion there: big cats nap on road in South Africa amid lockdown

Guardian, 17th April

The ‘Headline that I Dream Of’ Award

‘It’s Over!’

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

Cambodia, Siem Reap: A ‘lockdown’ entry from Dr. Howl

The last night of December 2019: it seems an age ago now, a different time, another world, not a moment barely five months past. That night, with a friend, we found ourselves at Ms. Wong—as much of a hospitality institution as you can get in this town—with me enjoying a cool mojito as the festive sounds of Siem Reap buzzed around us. 

Had I heard of the virus back then? A strange sickness in a distant Chinese city that I had barely heard of and that I struggled to pronounce? Maybe, a rumour or a brief news piece, but with Australia aflame and football scores to consider its repercussions—what it would mean for me and the rest of the planet— barely registered on this, the eve of new years.  

Ms. Wong is closed now – a victim of the economic disarray that follows the virus like an evil twin. The friend from that evening is in lockdown, somewhere in Bangkok, unable to work, unable to travel. Today, on the last day of another new year—Khmer—Siem Reap should be buzzing. It’s not. After twilight one expects to see tumbleweeds spiralling down the dark alleys of ‘Pub Street’, with rats and lost souls the remaining vestige of the quarter’s wandering night-life.

Still, during the day, life seems cosmopolitan here compared with images from back home, the kingdom manufacturing a distinct take on Covid control. Currently we are in a holiday-centred lockdown, although the notion of where to place the ‘lock’ stretches to the boundaries of your province and not your back door. On the streets and out on the rural roads social distancing translates to three in a tuk tuk (chickens an optional extra) and ‘flattening the curve’ is something that a drunken reveller does in a speeding SUV.

In mood we seem to be on-hold, waiting for something to happen, spectators to an unofficial race – will we succumb to the virus first or will its economic consequences overtake us before? The local media provide us with scant details. While in Europe, the USA, back home, we read that the world is on fire, the ‘bug’ burning through people’s lives, the economy, friends and family. 

Last week, returning from work, I drove through the trees and ruins of Angkor. There were still people about—all Khmer, hardly a ‘barang’ to be seen—and they seemed happy, picnicking on the sides of the park’s wide barays, taking selfies, juggling babies and soda cans in overfull hands. And if one closed out everything else, if one concentrated only on this moment, you could forget what was happening beyond, you could almost imagine that you were back on a mild evening in late December.

. . . that the world was ‘normal’.

How will this all play out? I have little idea. But each day of good health seems like a miracle and, for now, that is enough. 

Stay safe, stay healthy . . . and keep on howling.