The common loon is one of the most eye-catching and unforgettable appearing water birds with a wide human habitat overlap all across the lake country of North America. It is clearly identifiable with a black head and neck that lowers down into white stripes and panels like mirrors that seem to reflect either solar or lunar light – like water line portholes of a cruise ship at night.
Even more mystical is the sound of the loon’s wail across the water, creating an audible window of conscious awareness through which one sees eternity, best described by Henry David Thoreau as the most un-earthly sound he had ever heard. Before him, Native Americans attuned to atmospheric environmental frequencies knew it as a prediction of impending rain. The other loon call is a loud laughing startling yodel of an alarm, while standing up in the water with splashing wings to warn intruders they are approaching too close to the nest.
My inspiration for writing and drawing for this article is the annual Emmons family vacation at Lake Winnipesaukee in the A.M.C. Summer Camp not far from the Loon Preservation Committee headquarters in Moultonborough Neck, where they monitor the loon population and educate the public to support their programs.
As one of the oldest living bird species on Earth, research revealing a roughly 60 million year survival seems to lead to a missing link to egg-laying dinosaurs with feather-covered wings and incredibly efficient respiratory systems that extract more oxygen than other normal breathing creatures.
For environmental overlap with humans, in the Oscar-winning movie On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as an aging couple, like the Emmons, the calls of the loons seem to acknowledge their arrival and farewell at Squam Lake, not far away. The solemn tone of their message seems to mourn the environmental passage of time.
By George B. Emmons
