The Alberta Journal
Of ducks and sun-filled afternoons
We sat on the edge of a man-made lake somewhere in the north of the city of Edmonton. It was a spectacular late summer afternoon...almost timeless…the temperatures touching a balmy 25 degree centigrade. Lake Beaumaris is a storm water lake and brown hued ducks were all around, diving for little silvery fishes and critters off the surface of the lake. We spotted a couple of grey Canadian geese too. There was a ripple and a flurry of sorts, all around the water as the creatures played in the afternoon sun, content in themselves. The grass felt firm under me and I inched my feet out of my sandals and unto the mossy earth. It pushed itself back. I surveyed my toes with a certain amount of approval. Suddenly, a couple of waddling ducks ventured out of the water and headed towards me. I was startled! Surely my toes were not on their gourmet meal for the evening! Perish the thought of toe eating ducks! So much for my wary human thoughts! They waddled quietly by, silently acknowledging our creature presence and the absence of any morsels of food. They made a leisurely circle all around us and headed back into the lake in single file making a minimal splash in the effort of sliding into the storm water lake. Ah! What is storm water? Storm water is the water that runs down the street when it's raining or has snowed. Storm water enters holes in the gutter called storm drains. Water that flows down the street when it's not raining, like when one washes ones car or waters ones lawn, is called urban runoff. All of this flows from drains and pipes into man-made lakes. An environmental effort on the part of the city. At first sight, the lake is beautiful, but then one begins to notice the signs all around saying that swimmers are not allowed due to pollutants in the water. My little girl wanted to dip her feet into the lake but I forbade her to. I could see how my caution took away her primal instincts. I peeped into the lake and saw little plants under the water. These plants were natural water purifiers. I remembered them from the ponds of Bangladesh. So perhaps the fish and ducks were safe after all. As I gazed at the ducks, I recalled a cat that had strayed into my house the other day. It had a bell around its neck that tinkled as it moved and so I knew that it must have an owner. As it sailed into my kitchen, I noticed its ease of manner, similar to that of the ducks, confident of its environment and displaying no fear or ill ease in our presence. I was, on the other hand, alert, primed for action, an amygdala*-driven ripple through the nervous system creating a fight or flight response. And that too for an innocent cat! Other folks around me were more responsive to the little creature and responded to its need for creature contact. As urbanites, we tend to detach ourselves from Nature and it is this very act that is at the root of our fears and our little cautionary messages to our young. Why aren't children allowed to wallow in the mud like they used to, twenty years ago? Why cannot little Nasima or even little Betty carry a little earthworm home with her in her pocket? Why not risk that swim or a toe dip? But there I was, the careful parent telling my daughter, "It's time to go home…" when I saw her venture too close to the water. Children and ducks do not understand the importance of time. It is the fearlessness and perhaps the ignorance of the creatures around me that I envy on this sun-filled afternoon. As glaciers melt and the ozone layer widens, the ducks continue to bask in their eternal sunlight of happiness, while we mortal beings fret and fritter about our living earth and about the nature of time itself. We are the only beings on earth that have divided something as infinite as time into units, into atoms and molecules and then try to churn it up into globules of happiness, not knowing all the while that "They also serve who only stand and wait". - The amygdala, an almond-sized and -shaped brain structure, has long been linked with a person's mental and emotional state.
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