Tern Teachings: Guests that Nest & Give

It is not only humans that tell stories. . . In the voice of bright white feathers and a charming black cap, a story darts its way through gusts of wind off the coast of Massachusetts hatching out of makeshift nests of pebbles and dry grasses. . it is a seasonal story that unfolds in the months of April and May on Mass Audubon’s Tern Island in Chatham and Plum Island.

Despite its small size, the tern migrates 22,000 miles a year journey from Newfoundland, Canada, southward along the west coast of Africa to its wintering grounds in the open water off Antarctica! Although only a short-term sojourner on the coast of New England, arctic terns give back to the land on which they nest and feed by distributing cloudberry seeds, the primary way in which the seeds of this wild plant are dispersed. That the terns depend on the berries, and the berries on the terns is a heartwarming story of interdependence and reciprocity. Moreover, it is a story that suggests that even temporary guest can still contribute to a landscape’s thriving.

This story is a different one than we are usually told. In the human world, we are surrounded by the predominance of narratives that give more value to rooted as opposed to migratory identities. We argue over which wild plant is “native” and which isn’t, giving more value to the one that is rooted, In the human world we quarrel about who is truly local and who is an “immigrant” of a landscape with the underlying assumption that the newcomer is less valuable. National borderlines further prioritize and orient our sense of normalcy to stasis over mobility, yet we often forget nation states are only a recent construct in the history of the planet. Migratory birds, like terns, tell a more ancient story from deep time that does not privilege stationary over migratory. Terns show us that they are integral and vital to this coastal topography and ecology even though they may be here for only a few weeks because of the way they relate reciprocally and interdpendently with what is always living here. I love how terns redirect our focus from “us” and “them” to the quality and nature of the relationship regardless of the origins of those involved.

Design: I purposely designed this linocut to include the cloudberry flowers inside the birds, playing with the darks and lights, to show the interdependent reciprocal relationship between the two species.

For many of us who live on this North American landscape the only model for the relationship between those who have lived here for thousands of years, and those who have recently arrived are the violent heartbreaking stories of colonizers, or they are stories of people who have been forced to emigrate enslaved, or against their will as refugees. How might the story of the terns help those of us who self-identify as immigrants reconceptualize possibilities for how we might relate to this landscape and original peoples? What gift can we offer a place so that we, like the terns, might become integral to its thriving?

“What aspect of a woman marries the wind?” This is the question Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes asks in her Sounds True audio book The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths of the Wild Woman Archetype. She is speaking about how there is a vitality, a life force, like the wind, inside of us that is dangerous because it is wild and free, doesn’t follow all the rules, listens to an inner intuition more than external pressures. I believe we all have an inner arctic tern that darts with the wind, knows no human boundaries, flies according to its inner compass across many landscapes, and has the capacity to relate in deeply reciprocal ways with other beings, other life forms from multiple places. In other words, there is a potential for mutual thriving that is made possible when one is allowed to fly freely.

Small nesting tern linocut with a speckled egg, surrounded by native New England coastal plants including: swamp thistles, bristly fox, sea blite, beach grasses and cloudberry flowers and berries.

What the Arctic tern story reminds me of is the Haudenausaunee creation story of SkyWoman who falls from the sky and distributes seeds on Turtle’s back which then grew for all to benefit and that is how earth was created. Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, talks about Sky Woman as the original immigrant suggesting we all are immigrants on this landscape in one way or another. As this month of April unfolds, I am hoping Earth month celebrations will include reorienting ourselves to value the gifts offered by those migratory like the terns, and immigrant like the first woman falling from the sky. Can we begin to recognize what is birthed, what is thriving and also what still has the potential to bloom if we choose to follow the teachings of the terns and wisdom of the first woman as we live our precious and temporary lives on Turtle’s back?

Honoring this landscape called Massachusetts that cradles the nests of those both rooted and migratory, human and more-than-human, including the Wampanoag, Pawtucket, Massachusetts, Nipmuck people, the cloudberry flowers, arctic terns and many many immigrants like myself who have migrated here from far and wide. Following the teachings of the terns, I am asking myself “In what ways can I gift part of me to allow for all life here to thrive and bloom?” Photo Credit (blog post cover image) Sterna Paradisaea on Shutterstock.

References:

Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a poet, Cantadora, keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition, Senior Jungian psychoanalyst and bestselling author of the book Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype which first was published in 1992 by The Random House Publishing Group.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist, enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Professor and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and author of the bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants,

More Blog Posts