Creation Care on the Home Front
David Warners, Professor of Biology
Calvin College Spark
Spring 2007

The loons came back.

In northern Michigan at Au Sable Institute, where I taught a botany course, I had just returned to my cabin from a two-day extended field trip to the Upper Peninsula. When I left, the Memorial Day weekend was just winding down. The loons I had been hearing and watching each night for two weeks were absent from the lake by my cabin during the holiday weekend. In their place were water-skiers, pontoons, Jet Skis and lots of human activity. I neither saw nor heard any loons during the weekend, but a few days later at dusk, I again watched a pair of loons fishing on the once-again quiet lake.

This scenario has me wondering: Are there better ways we can live out our modern existence that would be more welcoming, more affirming of the nonhuman members of creation? Can we do a better job fitting in? This is an appropriate question to ask with regards to the portion of creation to which we are most intimately connected—the yards around our homes. Do we have to manage our yards in ways that exclusively appeal to one species, Homo sapiens , or can we care for these small portions of the creation in ways that benefit a broader community of creatures?

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