by Tom Betts
In a ledger with Mother Nature, I’m hopelessly indebted. After all, how could I ever keep up with all the wonderful sights, sounds, smells, and spectacular scenes that Nature provides me daily? But on one wonderful day on Georgian Bay this past May, I was able to make a small repayment.
Ellie (our golden retriever) and I were offshore a few miles, plying the deep blue waters for whatever finned monsters might be lurking there. When fishing, I am notoriously clueless about changes in my surroundings, fixed as I am on the task at hand. And Ellie is probably worse than I am … or at least she has never warned me of any approaching storms, high winds, nearby boats, or other such threats. She watches the rod in my hand for any sign of a strike. And she watches. And watches.
On this day, the infamous Georgian Bay Fog (as I call it) moved in on us rather abruptly. I hadn’t seen it coming, but we were fully engulfed in a quick minute or two, and visibility dropped to just a few boat lengths. Any land visible in the distance was suddenly lost, and a 360-degree circle around me looked all the same.
In this modern day of GPS navigation, the Fog does not present us with the problem it used to. Though I could see just a few meters in any direction, I assured Ellie that I could find the way back and that navigating the thick fog would be no issue except for watching for other boats.
Still, I cut my fishing short so that we could get a jump start for home. But just as I had finished reeling in my line, my peripheral vision detected movement out of the fog. It startled me for a second, and then I realized it was a small bird. I thought at first that it was a swallow, a species not uncommon out over the open water. But when it circled back, I realized that it was a shorebird of some sort. It fluttered for a moment near my boat as if confused, then flew off into the fog and disappeared.
“Hmm, that was odd,” I thought, reaching for the keys to start the motor. And then the bird appeared again, circled us erratically, and disappeared again. This happened two or three more times, and it was clear to me now that the bird was lost in the fog and no doubt very tired. The only “land” that it had seen in some time, I supposed, was my boat. Moments later, it appeared again, this time fluttering right above Ellie’s head as she lay calmly in the bow, ready for the trip home. And then the little bird landed right above her, on the boat!
There was no doubt in my mind what I needed to do: catch the bird and contain it until I reached the security of land at our cottage. And so, I gently reached for my fishing net and eased my way toward the bird. I looped the net over the bird in slow motion and then, not so slowly, cupped my hands around it. Surprisingly, he did not resist or try to escape the trap. He cooperated perfectly as I moved him into a more protected location in the boat and started for the cottage.
The boat ride was slow in the thick fog, but eventually, we made it to our dock, and my wife (who had received my desperate-sounding ship-to-shore lost-bird text) met us to welcome the rescued avian passenger. We identified him as the least sandpiper, a tiny shoreline species probably foraging happily in the shallows of one of the local islands before taking a flight into the fog, a flight that could easily have ended in tragedy.
Cyndy and I held him and assured him everything would be ok. And then we gently placed him at the water’s edge, where he immediately began to wade and forage again. This was a great relief compared to his aimless flight in an unforgiving fog half an hour earlier.
I am unsure if this helped in my repayment to Mother Nature, for in the end, it gave me a good feeling to have saved a fellow traveler lost in the fog. And just watching him probe the shallow water as sandpipers do … well, what more could I have wanted from a day?
When we checked on him ten minutes later, he was gone. Gone from our sight, perhaps, but no doubt staying close to the land where he belonged.
