Anas and the Ice Flow:
Relationships in the New Millenium

by Ray Rasmussen

The ice broke on the North Saskatchewan River just last week, on April 15. I wasn't there to see it crack and buckle, but today I walked along its banks and watched the ice floes in this first moment marking the end of the Canadian winter. Here, in Central Canada, nature lets you know when the seasons are moving--we don't have to wait for Punxsutawney Phil, New England's weather forecasting groundhog, to come out of his hole to deliver the news.

The North Saskatchewan is the Northern Branch of a great river whose headwaters are in the massive Columbia Icefields in the Rocky Mountains. It flows Northeast from its glacial source through forests and then aspen parklands and finally onto the prairies on its journey to Lake Winnipeg.

Some ice blocks are bigger than elephants. They crash into the bank, turn, twist, tilt upward and pile up until the power of the water unblocks them with a great grinding noise. Then, the bank loses yet another yard of soft earth in that ageless process that has shaped the contours of this mighty river.

It was while watching the river that I spotted her sitting alone on an ice floe, seemingly oblivious to the great workings of water and ice. She's a little thing, a drab mottled brown like the crisp dead leaves that will provide camouflage for her brood. For color she has but a little fringe of white on her tail and the leading edge of her wings and a small band of blue of her wings. Her name is Anas platyrhynchos, but her friends call her "the mallard lady".

It was clear that she hadn't yet found a mate and I imagined that like many of the women in Edmonton, she was caught in the waiting game called, "When will my prince arrive?"

And, in all probability it would be a matter of hours before a classy mallard guy, resplendent in his iridescent green mantle comes along. His voice, described in my bird book as a 'low reedy call,' reminds me of that great jazzman, Louis Armstrong, rasping out a love song. If ever you've heard a Male Mallard call to his mate or heard Louis sing, you'll never forget the sound. It starts you thinking about getting together with your woman.

But I could hear no throaty rasp. I imagined that Anas was moving inexorably towards Lake Winnipeg, alone, probably daydreaming about her knight in shining feathers while preening her feathers. She had already flown thousands of miles from somewhere as far away as Arizona or Texas and now she was simply waiting for him to show up in the middle of the vast Alberta parkland.

"Do something Lady Duck!" I yelled. "If he hasn't found you, you have to find him."

Of course, Anas will likely meet up with her duck. After all, they've been doing it successfully for millions of years. Even our mad rush to fill in our wetlands, prime habitat for migrating ducks, geese and swans, so that we can grow yet more surplus grain, hasn't yet stopped the yearly process of migrating, mating and rearing ducklings.

The image of Anas flowing with the river and accepting her fate brought to mind the great migration that we humans have made in developing fantastic technologies. But, our technological success seems to be inverse to our social success. Nowadays, many of us seem to be having problems finding soul mates. How is it that in Edmonton, a city of 1 million people, so many people can be alone and lonely. Yes, I know that aloneness and loneliness aren't the same--that some of us choose to be alone. But, I sense that there are many more of us who, like Anas, are floating on icebergs of our own making to unknown destinations--some distant Lake Winnipeg.

When I told my wife about Anas, her immediate response was: "Maybe she isn't ready for motherhood yet--maybe she's the new duck who's had a glimpse of the trials of raising ducklings in a world full of coyotes and hawks and she's just saying, "No." She was probably reflecting on our own difficulties in dealing with our 15-year old daughter.

Still, Anas is a duck, so who knows what's in her mind? But as far as humans go, I don't think that so many of us want to be alone for so much of the time. And, I don't buy that often heard argument that women are alone because the men their age and older are either married or have died. I believe that there are almost as many guys sitting alone on Friday and Saturday nights, drifting on the mind numbing ice floes of Television as it were, as there are women and that, if we ever reach it, that distant place that we are floating to, Lake Winnipeg, isn't the romantic place that the Hollywood and romance novel image makers have promised.

Even the arena of friendship seems to have become more difficult for us to manage. In this week's Sunday Times, John Harlow, asks: "Where have all our friends gone?" According to recent research, most people in Western society have only three 'close' friends--half the number of previous generations. And, what about families? In addition to a divorce rate approaching the stratosphere, recent studies suggest that less than 10 percent of us count family members as friends.

Of course, this begs the question: "What is meant by a friend?" One researcher used questions like, "Would you lend him/her a large sum of money?" "Would a conversation start up again without hesitation after a year-long absence?" "Are you comfortable with him/her in all moods and places, rather than just a work or in a sport?"

I don't much like these researcher's questions. It seems to me the key question is whether he or she is someone with whom you can be yourself--you know, that self who isn't perfect.

Regardless of how you define friendship, it seems wrong that in such large cities, we are so often alone, with neither friends nor mates. Or is it simply that we've arrived at a new human place--a Lake Winnepeg--without knowing it. It may be that if we relax our ideals about romantic love, about marriage for life, if we are willing to entertain the real persons that our friends are hidden behind their masques, that we will be able to have meaningful relationships.