Chimney Swifts and Quarantine (Written January 2021)

 

I was visiting a friend in Baltimore, a bird-lover who was taking me to the spot of a seasonal birdwatching attraction: the roosting of a great flock of Chimney Swifts in an old industrial chimney, still rising above its repurposed factory. Through some curious twist of evolution, Swifts roost on vertical surfaces, rather than upright, and are named because they roost communally in chimneys. Each fall, the Swifts returned to this industrial area for a few evenings on their migratory way South. Among the 15 or 20 people gathered to watch was a mother with her small boy, about five years old.

The boy and I struck up a conversation when he pointed to a picture of a lost cat on a flyer stapled to a telephone poll and asked me, “Have you seen that cat?”

“No, I haven’t seen that cat,” I said. “I don’t live in Baltimore.”

“I live in Baltimore,” he said.

“Oh, well I live in Washington, D.C. I’m here visiting a friend.”

“Washington?” he said. He looked at his mother as if for confirmation of something, then back at me. Then he exclaimed, “The news!”

Yeah, the news—way, way, way too much news.

Which was why I was grateful for this retreat to experience the natural world in the sky. More than seven months after the beginning of the pandemic, I’d had too many zoom meetings, too much time in front of a screen, too much social media, too much news, too much politics, too much panic and uncertainty and fear—and too much of all of it enacted in some virtual sphere outside of the real, natural world.

Mind you, this was October.

And I am one of the lucky ones. I work in the “information sector” in a job that can be done from my home with little disruption. My daughter, now 22, is launched into the world on her own, and I can wake every morning missing her but grateful I do not have to supervise remote learning while working. I am reminded of these blessings every day.

It turns out that at 60 I may have something else in my favor—my advancing age. Some recent research looking at people’s responses to the stresses of the pandemic in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that adults aged 65 years or older had much lower rates of anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, or trauma- or a stress-related disorder than younger generations. The findings mirror those of other high-income countries, including Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands.

A couple of important caveats: these are older adults living in the community, not in nursing homes or retirement centers; and the data is from early in the first months of the pandemic. Still, the data suggest something interesting about the way people of different ages respond to a uniquely stressful event that has affected the entire human population. The authors surmise that older people may bring to the stresses and isolation of the pandemic features unique to their age group that have helped them to cope: the consolation of memories, the perspective that comes with having been through trials before and survived, a knack for savoring simple things in everyday life (a walk in the park, a conversation with a friend), and an appreciation for the quality of a few close relationships over having many superficial acquaintances.

These are a form of intelligence we know colloquially as “wisdom.” But wisdom, by definition, is a product of time and experience, only in the rarest of circumstances accessible to young people. While the rates of anxiety, depression and trauma-related stress were all under 10 percent for older people, the rates for people age 18-24 were staggering: 49%, 52% and 46%. Along with the revelation that 18 teenagers in Las Vegas had died by suicide between March and December last year, we can surmise that we have been witnessing an adolescent cataclysm in mental health.

The return to in-person schooling has been a fraught subject. I am well aware of the concerns that teachers and parents bring to the subject (and aware, too, that I speak from a position of privilege, not having to decide about sending a youngster into a school building).

But I fear that our young people--teenagers especially—are just missing out on too much. Even some partial return to school will not bring back, until the pandemic subsides, the ritual celebrations that are landmarks in a young person’s life: graduations, proms, sporting events that bring together students and the community in celebration. These are the real, true (as opposed to virtual) stuff of experience that leads to wisdom.

Which brings me back to the Swifts. As dusk fell, the birds began appearing from all points on the compass—as if called by some music pitched beyond the hearing of humans—and for the next 20 minutes or so would circle the chimney in an ever-growing gathering as the birds arrived, 500 or more, from every part of the sky.

Just before the sun dipped below the horizon, they began one by one, then in greater numbers, to dive into the chimney where they would roost for the night. As they dove, the circling flight grew tighter like the funnel of a hurricane, winding its way to a finish as the last of the birds disappeared for the night.

I have never seen anything like it. The memory of it—and my pictures and videos—will endure as a highlight of that terrible year. There is a music, a communal rhythm woven into the fabric of nature, and into our human nature as well. May this pandemic speedily end that we might return in person to celebrating birthdays and baptisms, brises and bar mitzvahs, first communions, graduation ceremonies and proms, weddings and funerals. These are own ritual gatherings, evolved over years to correspond to that music only you and I can hear, the real, true thing, the wisdom of our species and the only real news you need to know.