by Fran Sage

Thanksgiving week, my husband Jim, our son Steve, and I went to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge about 10 miles south of Socorro, just off Interstate 25 in central New Mexico.

While Jim and I have only been to a handful of wildlife refuges, we have found them wonderful places. They are not always wonderful scenery in the awe-inspiring manner of the Grand Canyon, the Tetons, or Yellowstone National Park. They are, however, always beautiful in a special way: they bring us together with other species in harmony, make us feel part of the fullness of beautiful diversity of the world. Especially fine is that we are the guests, allowed to spend time with the birds, turtles, coyotes, and smaller creatures for a little while.

We particularly enjoy the otherness of other creatures for the brief time we are there. The refuges remind us that we are just a part of the vast world, not the owners of it, but at our best the stewards of it. The refuges are not meant for us though we are allowed to share them briefly.

The refuges are places where other species can live their lives, dependent on us as we have such power to destroy them, but not subservient to us. We may destroy them ultimately, but they will never bow to us. They are not our friends. They are creatures on this planet who are existing, fully devoted to living, and the refuges provide a place to do just that without man caused disasters but only those dangers that we all face in the natural world.

The wildlife refuges remind us that our fates are all linked, that we individuals will die but the species will continue. They link us all together both in place and time. Refuges are an actual physical place intended to protect other species.

But we also find comfort just in the fact of them. Even if we never are to be in them, trapped elsewhere by health or circumstances or choice, we find comfort knowing that refuges exist.

I will never see the wildlife refuges in the eastern United States, or in the Arctic, or in other places, but I am comforted to know they are there for they remind me every time I think of them of how I am part of a vast other world, a world beyond my ken.

At the pace our species is filling up the land, digging up its resources, creating new needs and then fighting to supply them, the wildlife refuges provide at least a small comfort to us and a necessity to vast numbers of other species. Jim and I particularly like the bird sanctuaries, not just to identify birds but to be with them.

Last month at the Bosque we had a rare and memorable treat. The big birds come in to it for the winter from about mid or late October and start leaving around mid February. Many birds and animals are there year around. But the highlight of our stay was seeing the snow geese, the Canadian geese, and the sandhill cranes.

Toward the end of our tour we were on the farm road along the northern edge of the refuge. The birds were feeding in the dormant corn fields. The fields were alive with the sounds of the geese and cranes and the ducks flying overhead.

We stood there in that mass of big birds (there were thousands and thousands of them there) and suddenly the snow geese rose and flew overhead in wave after wave honking and flying and filling the air, vivid white against the blue skies with the mountains nearby.

Again we had the epiphany of being part of the vastness of life, free for the moment as the birds are flying free, part of life as a whole, fully alive for those moments, not thinking but just being.

Today as I think of that experience and think of the dwindling down of this year and the promise that a new year may bring even if it is not always fulfilled, I am thankful for those refuges.

I hope we may all insist next year and in the years to come that all species have a right to exist, to have habitat that is theirs, and not be viewed as unimportant. We must be good stewards and protect the right to existence of the other species.

I wish you all a good new year and hope that we will all do what we are able to do to improve the health of the planet we share with all the other lives that also need it.

Let’s make protection of the planet our goal for the coming year(s).