David Graves

Coming into elderhood here in the States is hard. All the forces of pop culture, especially as expressed in the media, are centered on promoting youth, everything from TV images of emaciated teeny-boppers to radio lyrics of syrupy romantic love. For someone like myself, a 62-year old, single, white male, socially conditioned to be noticed by females as a "good catch," it's particularly hard to be addressed as "Sir" by younger members of the opposite sex, many of whom I still find attractive.

My work, however, brings me to another aspect of elderhood. For the past few years I have been taking middle school classes of students into urban parks here in San Francisco, both to learn about nature and to engage in restoration of natural areas. Most of the students, whose ages range from pre- to early adolescence, seem to appreciate my being older. I have found that the African-American and Asian youth with whom I work predominantly still have a familial background that appreciates elders--aunts, uncles, grandfathers, and grandmothers often live at home with them. It is only rarely that I encounter being shouted at "Hey, you old coot!" as I walk past a group of anonymous students gathered in some schoolyard.

It is late summer in the city of San Francisco and I miss the mockingbird's welcome song of last spring. I did see the bird briefly this afternoon while I came in through my cottage garden, but it quickly flew off silently. It's the silence I'm concerned about. Every springtime I am relieved to hear again the melodic chatter of the courting song that so characterizes the presence of that handsome bird of grey, white, and black plumage. The Northern Mockingbird is scientifically named Mimus polyglottos, from the family Mimidae, often called "mimic thrushes," a family which includes thrashers, catbirds, and mockingbirds. Worldwide there exist 35 species of these birds, all in the New World.

It has been 37 years since the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The alert was sounded, some progress made in protecting bird populations from the effects of pesticides, particularly in bringing back from the brink of extinction birds like the peregrine falcon and brown pelican. Yet, where I live, in the Outer Mission district, San Francisco, a paved over, hardened urban neighborhood, the bird habitat of trees, both lining the streets and growing in back yards, is a rarity. My only relief against the deadening landscape is a five-minute walk to a 318-acre urban park, McLaren Park, still largely undeveloped for human recreation in a section of the peninsula swept by scathing, fog-laden winds from the Pacific. There, red-shouldered hawks still screech in mid-air while performing aerodynamic displays of agility; ravens croak while soaring black-figured against leaden skies; and white-crowned sparrows flit about about in dense coyote brush, trilling to each other in their characteristic, melodic song.