Homing Instincts

Fall rain and the migration of the Arctic tern

I stepped out of the house yesterday morning and felt rain on my face, unexpected and cool sprinkling. The nostalgic peacefulness of it hit me so hard that tears sprang to my eyes. I grew up in the temperate rainforest of coastal Alaska where it rains an average of 167 inches a year, with another 80 inches of snow in the winters. I have wandered through many different countries, regions, and climates since leaving the nest. Through a tortuous course of events, I have found myself in the driest landlocked corner of BC, the Okanagan Valley, a place prone to wildfires, drought, and drunk Albertans on vacation.

On the rare occasions that it rains here, I am made aware of the state my nervous system is in most of the time, because the rain brings it down to a calmer, mellower level than usual. When it rains here, I can breathe deeply again, fill my lungs a little easier, relax my tense muscles a little more. The to do list thins, and the rush fades away. I spent the morning at the beach yesterday throwing a stick for my dog and watching the lazy smoke from the still burning wildfire on the other side of the lake drift slowly across the hill as it drizzled around us. The cool temperature was a soothing balm, my damp sweatshirt the coziest hug.

I was raised in the rain. My memories of childhood are mostly wet and cold. I remember fishing for coho salmon in September with my father and sisters, wearing a pair of size one moss green hip waders and oversized rain jacket and rain bibs. I remember driving home at the end of those days, damp and shivering, warming my toes on the dashboard heater of my dad’s old maroon Ford. I remember watching Artic terns swoop gracefully past us on paintbrush stroke wings during spring evenings as we walked along a glacial terminal lake.

Child’s glacier and the Copper River near my hometown

When you live somewhere with climate cycles like coastal Alaska, the seasons dictate the rhythm of all life. When the sun is out, you get while the gettin’ is good. You do all your outdoor tasks, like painting the boat or hunting to fill the freezer for winter, and you stay up extra late to have a beer with friends in the midnight sun. When it rains and snows, and days are short and cold, you hunker down, read, knit, paint, and sleep.

The long twilight of a summer night, taken around 11 pm.

Because it’s sunny here most of the time, my body is naturally in overdrive most of the time. I am motivated by sun guilt, the feeling that I need to accomplish a lot while the sun is out, lest I feel guilty for wasting it. Get the work done, fill the freezer, so to speak, for the leaner, darker times. My body doesn’t understand that it’s always sunny here, there is no natural season of rain and dark rest coming. The work will always be there, constant and demanding. The town won’t go into hibernation like my physiology expects. After just a year and a half in the hot sun and hustle as a consultant, I am weary.

We have a plethora of options now, and we are exposed to so many different places, people, and ways of life. This exposure is beautiful and important. It allows for more informed self-expression, empathy, and open-mindedness. I also think this level of exposure can be a hindrance. We can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, to a certain extent. We can live anywhere, for example, but is anywhere the best fit for us?

People have an affinity for ecosystems that are similar to those they grew up in. Those who are used to the prairies crave wide open spaces and distant horizons. I personally found the prairies weird and uncomfortable. I felt exposed and unsettled there, and kept watching the sky all around me, missing the mountains that usually cloak me, like maybe I was worried about some giant dragon swooping down and carrying me away. Clearly, there was no specific logical explanation for my aversion to the prairies, they just didn’t feel right.

I have followed the standard, agreed upon course of events for a successful person. I went to school, travelled, went to school again, finished with a master’s degree in biology, and got a job as a biologist. I make a steady income, own a house, and I’m doing fine. I worked hard to get here, and it is safe and stable.

But when I look at my early adulthood, I feel like it wasn’t even me making the choices that led me here. I was following a carrot dangled on a stick by someone else who was actually calling the shots. I have lived many different lives in different countries around the world. I have experienced a myriad of beautiful and difficult things. Yet when it was time to make big decisions, I faltered. I didn’t trust myself. I stuck to the safe path and did what I thought I should do, even if it was not what I really wanted.

What might it be costing me now to stay where I am? What am I foregoing in the name of security and safety? What would happen if I stopped trying to force myself to be something I am not?

I miss the rain. I miss the storms that would blow in off the Gulf, wind driving rain for days, sometimes weeks. I crave the sea salt on my lips. I feel ocean waves in my bones. I miss the cry of gulls so much it makes my eyes sting with tears. I miss the hemlock and Sitka spruce forest so deeply I smell it when I close my eyes.  

Me (bottom left), my sister, and our friends in front of a giant Sitka spruce that still grows beside a trail in my hometown

We are not the only ones that experience this inexorable pull to home. There are many animals that following their own homing instincts on huge migration circuits. Nobody does it quite like the Artic tern, which completes the longest migration in the world every year. The Arctic tern of the Baltics travels a 50,000-kilometer annual migration circuit from the north Atlantic through India, Africa, and Australia to Antarctica. The Arctic terns I knew in Alaska as a child returned from Antarctica and traveled up through South and North America to nest every year. Their lives are driven by inevitable natural cycles and depend on ecologically productive stopovers and safe resting places.

I believe there are places we are meant to be, and places we aren’t. There are things we are meant for, and things that are meant for us, but there is no such thing as should. Should is the imposition of somebody else’s values over our own. Yes, we can go anywhere, be anything, but that does not mean that we have to, or that everything is a good fit for us. The only true guide is what we need and want, and what we must do to make those things happen.

How do we know what we want, where home is, and how to get there if we are pushed and pulled by the demands of society and the expectations of others? We are often too consumed by how hard we are working to get there, we can’t even see where there is.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know I feel better when it rains. Perhaps if we followed the flow of natural cycles, the draw of those places and people that make us feel calmer, safer, and more ourselves, then home will be easier to find.

The Arctic terns are flying south now, pushed by the fall storms and moving south toward the Antarctic summer. The season of rest is approaching.

My home harbor in the spring

References

Alerstam, T., J. Bäckman, J. Grönroos, P. Olofsson, and R. Stranberg. 2019. Hypothesis and tracking results about the longest migration: The case of the Arctic tern. Ecology and Evolution 9:9511-9531.

McKnight, A., A.J. Allyn, D.C. Duffy, and D.B. Irons. 2013. ‘Stepping stone’ pattern in Pacific Arctic tern migration reveals the importance of upwelling areas. Marine Ecology Progress Series 491:253-264.