The Making of Waterfowl Winterfest

As the 2024 holiday season morphed into 2025, I was considering options for publishing my memoirs. I had set a target date somewhere in the latter months of the new year, and was leaning towards self-publishing.

“My story is too personal to allow outsiders to be involved,” I thought.

I needed complete control—so, no agent, no publisher—none of that—it was settled. But how to do it, that was the question.

I’d been walking the same three mile route six days a week since 2017—from home base at Wheeler Block down to the Merrimack River and along the riverwalk and over the bridges. The walk was the best part of my day. I could sort out life’s dilemmas, look out at the expanse of the river, and meditate, pray, even daydream and, at the same time, get my daily cardio in. Power walking for three miles takes me about an hour.

Walking—coupled with a routine diet I started in 2018—keeps me healthy. Once a person approaches the mid-70s plateau, it's clear what lies on the other side of the mountain.

"I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land." Dr. Martin Luther King said this in one of the most inspiring speeches I've heard during my lifetime. That was in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968. King was assassinated the following day. I was sixteen years old.

As time keeps on slippin’ into the future¹, I can relate to the sentiment of being aware of what’s coming. You don’t know how or when the end will come, you just know it will and, at my age, relatively soon.

All of a sudden, on January 12, 2025, my plans to publish my memoirs were put on the back burner. It was a sunny day around noon, about 32 degrees F with a slight breeze—pleasant by my standards. I love winter.

As I walked my daily beat, along the Centralville side of the riverwalk, I stopped about midway between the bridges and peered out towards the middle of the river.

"There they are!" I thought, feeling incredulous.

And they were active—diving like crazy.

I hadn’t seen the Common Goldeneyes since December 2021, during Covid. I sent a photo with caption and cutline over to the Lowell Sun back then and they published it straight away. I’d forgotten about the incident, thinking 2021 was probably a one off. But there they were—out there again—a mass of about two-dozen undulating divers. Thoughts of the previous encounter flooded back into my memory.

But wait! There were some tiny creatures out there with the goldeneyes.

“Could it be their babies?” I wondered. “Nah, last spring’s chicks are fully grown by now.”

I went home, pulled my camera out of mothballs, and headed back down to the river. As I looked out, the goldeneyes were still sitting on the water in a tight clump, diving sporadically with several of the tiny ducks joining in the action. I had no idea what species the little ones were. I took some shots and returned home to do some research and quickly found my answer—Buffleheads!

But wait, there was more—yet another species was spotted in the photos. More research and voila—a Hooded Merganser!

"What's going on here?" I was astonished.

And there’s more. The makeup of the group included a lone Common Merganser male and a female. They were all huddled together in a mixed species congregation out there in the middle of the river.

And that was that. Little did I know that the daily exhibitions of these visitors from the boreal forests of Canada would be my new focus every day for the next year. Not only would I cover the story, but I’d also write a book and develop the process that would resolve my publishing dilemma.

¹ "Fly Like an Eagle," Steve Miller Band, Capitol Records, Steve Miller, songwriter/producer, August 13, 1976.