Hope Lives

For the last few days, press releases have been appearing claiming that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker may not really be extinct.

The Ivory-Bill was a huge bird, a gorgeous bird, a bird of such charisma that it was called the Lord God Bird because of the automatic exclamation of awe made by the people who saw it winging through the tangled forests of the South.

It disappeared in the wake of evilly irresponsible logging and development practices, and despite scattered maybe-sightings, was thought to be extinct.

Which means, really, dead. "Extinct" sounds scientific, almost clinical. But it means dead. Rotting hollow bones and drifts of faded feathers. Tattered specimens in drawers. Not one left alive. No hope.

Now sources, including Cornell University, say that at least one bird has been observed alive, deep in the Arkansas woods.

The Ivory-Bill caught my imagination as soon as I began to study birds. More than the Passenger Pigeon, the Bachman's Warbler. Woodpeckers are universally charismatic birds, birds with numen, and I daydreamed about seeing an Ivory-Bill. I was going to write a story about two researchers searching for them and about the nature of liminality, life and death.

I can't yet let myself entirely believe in the Ivory-Bill's resurrection. I want it too much. And, with the sightings citing only one bird seen, it's possible it has survived only to disappear again.

But I want to believe in it, to believe in life defying death, in the resurrection of the Lord God Bird in spring, like Osiris, like Baldr, like a promise of springs and forests yet to come.

O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?