Migration

     Spring is a time for seasonal migration.  Books and magazines from our Wyoming daughter chronicle the movement of large animals—bison and mule deer—around her state.  Michigan’s lifeforms move, too, although the migrations are more apt to be winged than quadrupedal.  From raptors to smallest songbirds, migratory birds are arriving in our state.  We read about it, this time of year, and we see it in the world.

     Another ancient Michigan migration is underway as well:  lake sturgeon are headed upriver to spawn.  Lake sturgeon are big—one caught in (and returned to) the Detroit River recently was nearly seven feet tall and weighed 240 pounds—but when they’re spawning, they’re vulnerable to poachers.  So people organize to patrol the rivers.  Volunteers camp by the river or stay nearby, and take it in shifts to watch out for these magnificent creatures powering up the waterways.

     Our non-fauna migrations are less discussed.  For instance, we have the short, dramatic migration of the petals of flowering trees.  They don’t go far, mostly just from branch to ground, as is the case with magnolias.  Crabtrees, cherries, and others, lighter, ride the breeze as they fall, and afterward, to form drifts and scatter patterns, impressionism at our feet.

     Forest duff, last autumn’s leaves and the winter’s twigs and stalks, moves as well.  It lies in the woods, biding its time, waiting for our dog.  Then it leaps.  Rascal is a canine magnet.  Duff travels home with him, some becoming one with his fur, the rest settling on our rugs and floors.  We’ve just had him groomed and are hoping for some relief.

     Living plants have more agency.  Frank and Elaine’s hydrangea, for instance, crossed the street, and their hostas traveled all the way up the block to our back yard.  Lilies of the valley made it from one side of our house to the other last fall.  More decamped entirely and went to live next door.  Periwinkle is always on the prowl and cannot be trusted.

     The same is true of the yellow water irises Pat planted in her pond.  Not only have a number of them left the pond, but they are waging a concerted campaign for the lot line.  Pat warned the neighbor of what’s coming and assured her that she stands ready to help fight them off, but the neighbor laughed and said she’s looking forward to their arrival.  Pat has a hopeful eye on some purple irises on the move in another neighbor’s yard, but Pat’s yard doesn’t figure in their migration pattern.   

     More migration occurs inside our dwellings.  The migration of non-life-forms is commoner than you think.  At Sue’s house, it’s shoes.  Despite having perfectly good homes in closets, the family’s shoes gather on either side of the front door.  Pair after pair, they mass in piles, remaining in these social aggregations until banished once more to the closets.

     Pens and pencils, however, are by far the most active migrators.  Furthermore, the most talented of them hide where no one can see them.  When the writing-implement drawer at Pat’s house fails to bear fruit, she must hunt high and low, and if she’s looking for a favorite pen, it’s apt to be hiding under an envelope in a downstairs desk.

     The situation is similar at our house.  We corral pens and pencils in a miniature tardis on the kitchen counter, but while the tardis itself doesn’t travel through space, its contents do.  Both my husband and I like to solve crossword puzzles.  We engage in this activity willy-nilly throughout the house, pens following in our wake.  And those pen-wannabes, mechanical pencils?  They follow the resident physicist as he roams the premises filling yellow pads with equations.  Periodic roundups are necessary to recapture our stock.

     Marilyn and John, however, have a handle on pen-and-pencil escapades.  They, too, enjoy crosswords, but they have discipline.  They print out the crossword from their paper and immediately mount it on an extra-wide, ordered-for-the-purpose clipboard.  To which they clip a dedicated mechanical pencil.  Unlike our sturgeon, their mechanical pencils do not fight their way upstream.  It isn’t necessary for the survival of the species.  When the eraser is used up on the dedicated pencil, Marilyn elevates a new one to take its place.  “I just got a new supply,” she says.  “They’re sitting in a sort of soup-can thing on my desk.  I have enough for years.”

     Whether winged or scaled, animate or inanimate, parts of Michigan are on the more.  Don’t know what to tell you about Marilyn and John, except they live in Ohio.  Migration patterns must be different there. 

7 May 2021