A GREAT PLACE OF PEACE
Everywhere there is a sense of wings today. This afternoon my husband Barry removed Merak’s second infertile egg. Merak is the human-imprinted red-tailed hawk who flies free, but regards my husband and me as kin. The lovely, wild 800 acre conservation area park where we live and work is her circle of reference. Once again, her pitiful, solitary attempts at fashioning a water-logged nest on our back porch roof and hunching over infertile eggs is at an end. Released into the freedom of a sunny, windy, late-April day, the magnificent bird is everywhere, ascending the sky to soar with passing turkey vultures, circling low to brush my cheek with her wingtip, clucking her delight to me as she rushes down the driveway.
It used to be that Merak would briefly be distressed by these egg losses, searching out even more unsatisfactory nest sites--the steep, wind-racked gable over my writing room window, for instance. But this year, her fifteenth, I am wondering whether she is starting to slow down. Other years, each of two layings produced a pair of eggs, where this year, for all her apparent health, she has achieved only singles. Last fall and this spring, her absences have been shorter. She has spent more time lurking in our nearby trees. And now, today, she shows nothing but thankfulness to be relieved of her unfulfilled attempts at motherhood.
So yet another grief stalks me amid the brightness of this radiant day. A time will come when Merak's grace will no longer inhabit our skies. And already here, there have been losses, too many losses to bear easily.
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“Spy Rock would be the perfect place to build a tea room,” enthuses one park visitor 
standing on the worn granite stumps of mountains, cherished by all who come to the park, gazing out over a throng of lakes. “That would be an easy way you could get more money.”
Everything turns on money here now. A few years ago, our provincial government slashed conservation authority funding by 95% to help finance tax cuts to benefit the rich. Since then, we have limped along with minimal local financing and a continual attention to grasping funds where we can.
“Let us sell pins and t-shirts to the school children who come,” a would-be fund-raiser suggests to Barry. “You could sell them when the kids get off the bus, before you start teaching them.” Luckily he doesn’t notice how my husband’s face freezes. He cares passionately about the thousands of school children who come here each year, and the conservation education program that makes cherishing the wild come alive for them. This education program will be the first to be jettisoned if we cannot make our income goals. Only Barry’s conviction of the necessity of teaching children to see nature as home keeps him going these days.
Occasionally, reluctantly, I have stood as a volunteer at the park gate, trying to explain what I fail to understand myself--why in an affluent province paid admission is necessary for public land once free for all to enjoy, how a park has become a business. Harried and ashamed as I am, I notice that families in battered, rusty cars are more likely to be sympathetic and compliant, while drivers of Mercedes and limousines tend to spin their wheels and turn away, outraged at the five dollar fee. For his part, instead of welcoming visitors and sharing his excitement about the significant features of this Canadian Shield land, 800 acres of ponds and swamps, forests and fields and high ridges and sparkling lake, Barry now spends a significant amount of his work days arguing about unpaid fees, counting coins and making out numerous reports on every dollar collected.
And then a bright, young doctor acquaintance remarks, “Well, if the park is sold, as the government threatens, I wouldn’t mind buying a lot along the ridge. Hey, with that view it would make fantastic house sites.” Perhaps she senses how I have stiffened, for she adds, “Face it, Peri. It’s the way of the world. You just can’t hold onto these places for ever.”
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