Diptych: Feather, Fuel

 
I. Feather of the Redstart

Pale gold in females and youngsters. Only the male American redstart flashes crimson. But the whole species gets named after him.

She hops a branch with quick pecks. Shy mouse. Except that tail, two bands like faded yellow stoplights at dusk. Go slow? Or gamble the intersection. Like slants of sun in tough air. Like the forest’s fallout shelter sign.

She’s a ravine-loving warbler and this ravine is within the plume exposure pathway zone of the Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Station. Sirens, 97 of them, would drown out a warbler. Will drown. Have already drowned—up the Susquehanna River is the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station, and upriver is March 28, 1979, and upriver are another 96 sirens. One less.

So much power, generating. Males sing 11 notes to claim their ravines. Her call is bright and short, the click of flint on flint, the tap of a tiny talon on tupelo. The twist and the catch. Piston precision.

Did you know the sirens when they sound don’t mean run? They are a signal to check emergency messages. Even then, why bother. Some sirens sounded on March 28, 1979 but no one ordered evacuation until March 30. Two days. Then what, to what fallout shelter? It’s in the air. It is the air. How can you run from that?

Barnes Run is the tributary she haunts, my little American redstart, in a place called Ferncliff which is many things depending on who you ask. It’s a wildflower preserve, a wildlife habitat, a county conservancy, a branch in the Old-Growth Forest Network, and it is federally protected as a natural national landmark. A hiking trail doubles as a dirt road for access to the railroad and the river and a residence. It’s only 65 acres but each step through it in summer is like being under and over emerald lace in the making.

How big is 65 acres? Well, one square mile has 640 acres. Peach Bottom covers 620 acres and gets its name from the area’s lavender redbud blooms thick on springtime trees that someone thought were peach-colored. Three Mile Island is actually 2.2 miles long. This is a terrible word problem. Restart with the redstart?

American redstarts hunt by flashing their tails to startle insects out of hiding. They and I prefer old forests when we can find them. I always thought old forests were west and north of me, as if only the redwoods, as if only Alaska. So to explore Ferncliff in south central Pennsylvania, to start thinking as I startle a redstart? It’s a different station of power.
 

II. Fuel for the Go-Kart

Before I see the redstart, I read a sign at the entrance to Ferncliff warning off motorized vehicles. So that’s why a go-kart careens past me, combusting and coughing, flinging mud, driven by man in aviators.

Rattle and roar for the rhododendrons. Mudder for the mountain laurels. Hemi for the hemlocks. Race against the rules. Don’t feather those brakes; slam for the fishtail. Should I hate this guy?

My brother and I had a green go-kart, the Lime Limo, a Sears and Roebuck special. Actually, our grandparents had it, and we donned our dad’s old aviators when we visited rural east Texas in the 1980s. The roads were dirt, the population low, the days hot. The game was to navigate a smooth ride or to hit all the potholes on purpose. We came from Ohio and roads too dangerous for even walking; Texas roads were playtime.

So I can’t hate the guy in the go-kart at Ferncliff. I remember how fun it was. I remember assuming all land was for our recreation. Such speed so loud and low to the ground, the scent of the pitch pines and slash pines mixed with grease and rubber, and the homebase landmark of Grandma’s pecan tree. How we hated pecans, begging for blue popsicles instead. I never cared about the go-kart’s noise pollution because I sat in it. It never interrupted me because it was always with me. It was a toy.

But now. How can anyone drive a go-kart so recklessly through such a beautiful spot?

The only safety lecture I recall, regarding the Lime Limo, was the cautionary tale of Isadora Duncan, the famed dancer whose neck snapped when her long red scarf tangled in the wheel of a convertible. My mom said my long hair might get caught in the exposed engine of the go-kart and I would die like Isadora Duncan. The engine was behind the driver’s seat. Let your brother drive, let your brother drive. He had short hair. So I was to ride shotgun and keep my hair tied down, which I did not do. I’d make him give up the hotseat as soon as we turned the corner. And I was to think carefully about the dangers of long scarves upon my return to Ohio, which I did not do. I own a long red scarf right now.

At Ferncliff, I see more red—scarlet spiceberries, gleaming like holiday candy. I have this idea to forage in the old-growth forests, and these berries I will drop in to vodka for many months. An infusion, like peppercorns. I’ll fuel the new year with the reddest bloody Marys, wrap a scarf tight around a throat, rename a whole species for all their colors, not just the boy’s wings.

And the end of Ferncliff, another sign, about leaving the boundary of the protected land, about caution, about trespassing. A shack on a parcel, private. An old truck. The go-kart.

Isadora Duncan would sometimes dance barefoot, outside. Her kids died without her when the car they were in sank in the Seine. She said to her fans, “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

To drive home I cross the hydroelectric dam at Muddy Run. Massive vultures soar at eye level and beyond them I worry myself against the stagnant water and the bare cracked banks of this sacrificed ravine that was chosen over Ferncliff as the one to flood. Motorcycles ratchet noise through my windshield. Sun so blinding off concrete startles me after a day of shade and there is the red of my own retinas.

But like how I temper my disgust with the go-kart, I can’t fully loathe the dam, the turbines, the engineering. I love electricity. I love power. This place and Peach Bottom fuel my internet access, my sleek laptop, my sleeker phone. They fuel the gas pumps that fuel my car. I love seeing the vultures from above.

At the time Muddy Run was constructed it was the largest such facility in the world, a tidy triumph of the human desire to rearrange water and make it sit still, contained.

It would be another 49 years before Ferncliff would get its notable designation as old-growth. It’s one of the smallest but most pristine wedges of old-growth forest east of the Mississippi.

Is it a tragedy, that gap of nearly 50 years before enough people saw what else could be reserved? Or is 50 years reasonable?

An American redstart might live ten years. Vultures, maybe 20. Isadora Duncan lived 50.

Ferncliff was designated as old-growth in 2017. Three Mile Island was decommissioned in 2019. Peach Bottom’s license expires in 2034. Sears still sells go-karts.

I lied about the only safety lecture. There was another one. Feather the brakes so they don’t lock.

Feather for the redstart, that quarter ounce of energy in an era of megawatts. Watch how she flashes her sign. She wants to startle, to swallow fuel for her dance. She is still wild here.