You CAN Go Home Again
Some wonderful places change enormously over decades, yet still feel like home.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
I used to find Thomas Wolfe’s words “you can’t go home again” comforting. My childhood home was violent and scary—I’d never want to go back there. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed returning to other former homes.
Last year when Russ and I returned to Michigan State University so I could see a Black-capped Chickadee where I’d seen my first precisely 50 years before, we checked out all the apartments where we’d lived. It was also fun to retrace my steps at Baker Woodlot.
I’d loved our time in East Lansing and felt nostalgic, but I had no pangs of homesickness at all. It was during our time there that we got married, graduated from college, and I started birding, so it’s not like this wasn’t a lovely, important, and memorable period of our lives, but I think that, like high school, East Lansing always felt like a temporary wayside on the path to where our real lives would begin, never quite home.
Then, two weeks ago, I attended the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology’s annual convention. This year it was in Madison, and I felt wave after wave of homesickness. The meeting was held in a hotel just a few doors down from Russ’s and my old apartment building.
We both loved that apartment, and the building looks almost exactly the same as it did when we left it 45 years ago, but I felt nostalgic, not homesick. As far as dwellings go, Peabody Street has been home for me from the moment we carried our first boxes in, a Bald Eagle flying overhead, Evening Grosbeaks calling from the box elders, and chickadees showing up within moments of Russ setting up our first bird feeder. Peabody Street is where we brought our three newborn babies home to, and even where my daughter and son-in-law brought their newborn baby home to during the pandemic.
No, our old Madison apartment didn’t feel like home, but that building was less than a mile from the first place on this planet that I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with: Picnic Point, or what is now called the Lakeshore Nature Preserve. That’s where I felt all those waves of homesickness.
I discovered Picnic Point the first week we lived in Madison and it was love at first sight. The park was on the shoreline of Lake Mendota, with wonderful marshes, mature woods, dense tangles, and other rich habitats all in a single lovely park.
I visited Picnic Point hundreds of times in the five years we were there, including every single schoolday morning from the beginning of March through the end of the school year except during thunderstorms. I’d get up at 4, put on my birding clothes, and grab my backpack with a change of clothes (I was among the half of all teachers back then required to wear skirts or dresses to school) and any graded papers and other work I’d brought home, and would bird from before sunrise until it was time to head to the bus stop.
When birding was good, sometimes I had to run a mile or more to make it on time. Noel1, my bus driver, would wait if he spotted me running, so only once did I miss the bus—a Golden-winged Warbler was singing away in some dense vegetation and I simply had to see it. I ran like mad after I finally got a good look but was still over a block from the bus stop, not in easy view, when the bus went by; I had to run the mile and a half to get to work. A school bus passed me, some of my students taking bets on whether I’d make it in time. The losers learned never to bet against Mrs. E.
On this three-day stay in Madison, I visited Picnic Point four times, feeling a soul-deep contentment every moment I was there. Warbling Vireos, American Robins, Gray Catbirds, and Baltimore Orioles seemed just as abundant as ever, along with a few Red-headed Woodpeckers and Wood Ducks.
No place stays the same over years, much less decades, and many things about Picnic Point are very different from what I remember. Back then I saw Cliff Swallows only as migrants—now they’re nesting somewhere about because I saw them collecting mud.
Canada Geese were once strictly migrants visiting Picnic Point only briefly in spring and fall—now they’re nesting all over the place. Wild Turkeys wander in the woods. And no longer is the marsh across University Bay Drive teeming with Black Terns—the nesting colony that I so loved and took for granted disappeared long ago.
But hokey smoke—now Sandhill Cranes are everywhere—in the marshes and ballfields, flying overhead, and even strolling across busy parking lot entrances.
During my five years in Madison, I’d amassed a list of exactly 200 species of birds at Picnic Point, but Sandhill Cranes were not among them. Now they were inescapable!
My son often tells me about the adorable baby Sandhill Cranes near his home in Florida—cranes are so exceptionally tame there that it’s easy to see whole families on manicured lawns.
Up here, they keep to wilder places, the grasses and shrubs almost always obscuring views of the little colts.
In Madison, the cranes have grown every bit as comfortable with people as those Orlando ones! It was especially thrilling to see a family with two colts at close range when I was leading a family birding trip with my dear friend Alicia Craig.
I miss the old Picnic Point sign, but I was very happy to notice on one of the new signs that the park now opens at 4 am.
Back when I lived there, the park didn’t open till 7. I hate breaking legitimate rules, but what choice did I have?
One spring morning, while I was thrilling at some Hooded Mergansers hours before the park “opened,” I heard footsteps approaching. Even as I was turning around, I blurted out, “Look through my scope!—Hooded Mergansers displaying!” And then I realized the guy was a policeman, there to kick me out. But he politely obliged, and the moment his eyes focused, he got excited—he’d hunted Hooded Mergansers before but had never seen them displaying. He didn’t say a word about my being there when the park was closed—instead, he started strolling by regularly, always asking what I’d been seeing.
That kind of friendliness is the same as always. One guy walking past saw my big camera and asked how many pictures I’d taken that day. I checked—371 so far. We got to talking about birds, and he asked what the giant ones walking around were. He had a rich Caribbean accent and the jolliest laugh I’ve ever heard. Fittingly, his name was Jude—he really could take a sad song and make it better.
A bit later, I ran into a graduate student named Martin whose Picnic Point list had surpassed mine—he was at 214! I miss Picnic Point profoundly, but was so happy knowing that my beloved park is in good hands.
Change may be the only constant, but at Picnic Point, the song remains the same.
Noel Johnson was the best bus driver ever, anywhere. He made everyone on his bus feel like part of a community.
True story: Russ and I lived in a married student apartment for several weeks before we got our apartment. (We’d have stayed in Eagle Heights but we had a dog who stayed with Russ’s parents until we could get a place that allowed pets.) Eagle Heights is a sprawling, huge complex—exactly the kind of place where I easily get lost. For the first few days, Russ walked me to the bus stop and met me there at the end of the day, making sure I knew the route. The problem was, there weren’t enough signs showing which way to turn to get to the numbered buildings. Fortunately, at least for a couple of weeks, an Indigo Bunting was in full song every afternoon where I had to make a left turn. Then one day he wasn’t singing, I missed my turn, and got hopelessly lost. Russ was so worried he went to the bus to see if I’d missed the first one. I wasn’t, and he asked Noel if I’d been on the last one, which of course I was. I’d only been riding the bus for a few weeks, but Noel knew who I was. The next morning, he looked genuinely relieved when I got on, and told me how worried about me he’d been!
After writing this post, I googled him and discovered that he had died just last year. His obituary shows just how beloved he was.
Ah, what a sweet article. I was also in Madison, from 1971-75. I spent my free time fishing in Lake Mendota, sitting on the Union Terrace, and walking or jogging along the Lake Shore Path to Picnic Point. That in addition to taking a few classes, since I was pre-med. Madison was a wonderful place, even in the brutal winters (Duluth is probably worse). Even if we can't go home again, the memories are wonderful.