91.9 f.m. Durango in 93.9 f.m. On translator 30. Serving the plot of county. Longing to tourism encourages an exchange of ideas and experience between people of different cultural backgrounds a Mexican voluntourism project is serving as a successful model that benefits both sides and Jim that's here and this is the pulse of the planet Nancy McGee He has participated in a number of volunteer tourism projects around the world her experience with t one of the promos daughters was particularly inspiring working with the prime of Taurus I learned about a system that they use where they work together training each other within the community about childhood nutrition for example they use texture eyes vegetable protein and find ways to incorporate their recipes because it's a product that doesn't need refrigeration it's easily storable any. The Lead. List lists. Lists The. Leg. The I'm. A. Celeb. Lists. Celeb. Plenty. Live. Live. Live. Live . Live. It is. Katie you are is brought to you by during go Motor Company the ford. Dealership has a fresh no hassle approach to finding a new car by posting the price on all vehicles in hopes of taking the hassle and guesswork out of buying and their noncommissioned sales associates provide a no pressure environment Durango Motor Company also has a complete service and parts apartment as well as a detail shop located at 1200 carbon junction across from Wal-Mart Durango Motor Company on the Web Facebook and by phone at 385-4822 the current time is 529 p m and you are tune into k.d. You are Durango you just heard the Weber duel with weird soccer mommy with inside out. With future doesn't know by Polaroid with Rocky Mountain high the current time is 5 30 pm and you are tune into Katie you are doing. I am Richard Nelson for a powder program of observations of the experience of watching news on the world around us. To listen to this sound. That's the voice of a common loon I'm keeping company with for a visa and credible birds. On a remote lake in far northern Alaska on glassy calm water on a midsummer morning. Overcast low clouds occasional drizzle Oh my goodness one of the loons just popped up right in front of the canoe and rises its body up out of the water shows its white breast flaps its wings and now dipping its beak into the water looking down 15 feet off the bow of my beautiful long red Well actually sort of a funky long red canoe. Did you hear that that was the sound of the diving just off the bile and I can see a little trail of bubbles on the silky smooth water. Call Yukon Indian people who live in this remote boreal forest country of northern Alaska have a traditional saying about someone who sings very beautifully and it goes this way what's. Known in that means literally translated We say of him his voice is like the voice of a loon that has landed on a lake an elder from the village of Hughes on the kayak River not far from where I am right now once told me what this saying really means he said when a loon calls on a lake it's the greatest sound a human can hear and another elder once told me the loons call is the standard against which all other sounds are measured well people from many cultures and many different backgrounds have been swept away by the beauty and the power of the common loon's voice and the loon has come of course to symbolize the vast pure undiminished unspoiled wildness of the north country why this bird is called a common loon is a total mystery to me because everything about this bird seems extraordinary and unparalleled and I'll tell you what there's no better place to hear the voice of the Loon than where I am right now here listen to this. What a piece of luck to be keeping company with these birds I am above the Arctic circle a little bit north of latitude 67 degrees in the Brooks Range rugged spectacular mountains that stretch across the far north of Alaska from the Canadian border on the east to the Arctic Ocean in the West Oh my goodness these 4 loons I've been paddling along leisurely keeping pace with these loons for about the past 2 hours and they've gotten so accustomed to me that I have sort of become part of the scenery for these birds. Here that sudden kind of swirling sound that's one of the loons diving they're busy working along the shore of this gorgeous lake and diving intermittently sometimes all 4 of them down at once sometimes one or 21 of them kind of lays over on its side right now stretches its webbed foot out to the side as if it's shaking the water off. Another one just bobs up now and dipping their faces down into the water as if their wedding their beaks and actually what they're doing is looking down for the bottom of the lake were in kind of shallow water here looking down to see if there's something down there a little fish a little school a fish Well the lake is silky calm water right now as I look off to the other shore of a little bay that we're crossing there's 2 tundra swans brilliant white against the lush green of this lake shore it's high summer and everything is as lush and as green as it gets here in the Boreal Forest off to my left in the distance I can see the peaks of the air gets mountains which are iconic mountains of the Brooks Range spectacular Spiers and great rocky shining granite faces this is everything you would dream of for a perfect setting in the wild country of the fire north I'm also in Gates of the Arctic National Park it's a 2nd largest of all America's national parks and it's certainly one of the greatest jams in the wild heritage of our planet now these loons paddling in a fairly tight group all each one of them only a foot or 2 from the other they're acting as if they're longtime friends and I suspect that that's exactly the case my friends Stephen k. Groups who have spent 25 years in this part of the Brooks Range say that loon sometimes seem to enjoy visiting perhaps with old family members or friends I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was a male and female I'm quite sure of that because I started out the morning with one of them then another one came in and then 2 more showed up and I think we have an old married couple here and perhaps the other 2 loons. Are their offspring from perhaps last year the lake we're on here is very deep about 200 feet the water is absolutely clear and it's inhabited by the kind of fish that you would expect big lake trout and northern pike that you'll see suddenly bursting out from the reeds along the edge there's a lot of other stuff in this lake that makes you think of wildness just off to my right a big beaver house and a little while ago I saw to Bieber's cleaving along the waters here and then just a little ways off here at the edge of the lake there's a bunch of churned up earth dug and excavated and I watched last night a grizzly bear down here on the edge of the lake digging apparently after muskrat who have little tunnel houses along the edge of the lake I don't think it got any but I can't be sure also along the shores of the lake there's a mother black bear and 3 little cubs of the year and there are also tracks of wolves and tracks of the emblematic animal of the wild North Country The Wolverine along the shore here and along the sandbars feel that a river. Oh somebody riled up did you hear that one of loons just took a run across the surface of the lake have no idea why toward the other moons everybody settled back down now. That was a classic territorial call of the common loon and it signals other loons to stay out of the nesting territory it's kind of an aggressive call each male common loon has a distinctive yodel and talk about a sound that fills up the entire. Oh my goodness this is as close as I've ever been to loons they're just off the side of the canoe here you can hear my paddle as I'm really trying to keep from drifting right into little breezes come up and the 2 of them dive down on the other ones looking down at them they're obviously diving for oh my goodness I can actually see one of the loons right down. Under the canoe here and I can see it's next making back and forth to see its big webbed feet off to the side propelling they pump both feet at the same time rather than alternating Oh my gosh down in this crystal limpid clear water one of those loons and now it sort of pumps away and it's lost in the ripple reflecting surface of the water all 4 of them are now down under water and if I had a bit oh yeah there's another one I can see another one 0 goodness it popped up not 3 feet off about the canoe and all 4 of them now up they've gotten used to me over the last couple hours and they pay almost no attention to the canoe. That call reminds me of a time when I was sitting by the shore of a lake at the edge of the village of who sleep on the kayak River not far from here you can Indian village we are in the homeland of course you can people right now. And an old man was sitting next to me it was a sad and quiet time for the people of who sleep because one of the most esteemed elders of that village had died a man named grappa Chief Henry and the old man I was talking to said all it would be good to hear dogs in a Right now that's the common loon. A big splash here is one of these loons again skittering across the water and the man said Oh it would be so good to hear dogs into the Lune right now we really like to hear that music as if it would be an appropriate thing to happen in commemorating the life of the elder who had died around the same time an elder woman from the village of Ruby down on the Yukon River she walked down to that lake at the edge of the village of who sleep and she stood there there happened to be a pair of nesting loons on that lake and she went down and I can remember her so vividly she wore a black dress and a black shawl very beautiful elder woman with gray hair and she stood there by the lake and she started to sing traditional songs that are called spring the songs and that pair of loons moved in her direction and stopped off the shore where she was singing and they began to feel the air with their voices again and again that same great wailing sound that we were hearing a little bit ago what an amazing thing to see will call you can people say that the loons voice is not only remarkable for its beauty but it can also give omens or signs for example if someone walks up to the edge of a lake like this one and a loon dives again and again and again and every time it dives it gives an abrupt little you alarm note as. Loons will sometimes do come people say that warns of an illness or possibly even a death that the loon can foretell through the power of its spirit for quite a con people the loons remarkable voice and its beautiful plumage are 10 Jubal expressions of this bird's spiritual power and certainly the power of these birds beauty evident to anyone who would open their eyes one of the loons just jumped up from the lake and another one I'm sure its mate takes off. Leaving a male and female loon right here these are big birds when you watch them swimming in the lake like this they're the size 0 right smack in front of us one of the Loon comes up 10 feet off the bow of the canoe and the 2 swimming toward each other right now they're big birds almost 3 feet long from the tip of their bill to the outstretched feet when they're flying good size and the wingspan just about 4 feet for a fully grown adult for comparison that's about the size of the wingspan of a Canada goose good sized birds I can see now so beautifully in this resiliently clear air the remarkable intense black color of the loon in the back covered with very white ivory colored squares and spots in a striking geometric pattern and then around their necks both of these birds as they're looking over their backs toward me now as I'm following in their Will swimming slowly off toward the shore and I'm paddling gently along behind I can see the conspicuous white band around their neck and when they turn as one of them has now I can see the white belly and chest the male and female look exactly identical to my eyes anyway except the male is a little bit larger the male loon just came up right next to me jest to my right here quick on villagers very rarely hot loons they've been more a food that people would eat if they were really short of food especially in the spring but occasionally I did see in someone's house the stuffed skin of a common loon something that people were keeping to admire as an exquisite work of natural art and perhaps I suspected as an amulet an item that had spiritual power now our common loon is highly adapted to life on in and under the water both of our loons. Here under water right now they're among the world's best diving birds they can dive to at least 200 feet so they know what they're doing under the water a little while ago I was watching them paddling along in the shallows as they were diving and probing around in the vegetation on the bottom and they paddle with both legs their legs are located far back on the body and their feet are Web to very powerful leg muscles on these birds the leg bones interestingly are somewhat flattened for an aft so they're streamlined that reduces the drag on the forward strokes when the loon is swimming or diving imagine being adapted to that degree to life in the water now most birds Here's another interesting way that loons are adapted to life in the water most birds have hollow bones for lightness but in fact many of the loons Mones are solid they're less buoyant that way and it's better for diving makes it easier for him to spend time down here into the water another thing they can do is they compress their feathers against their body to squeeze out the air when they're dying remember the trail of bubbles we saw a little while ago from one of these loons when she or he dove they usually make very strong arching dives when they go down and we've been hearing the sound of that occasionally as we follow him around but they can also quietly sink down below the water sort of like a submarine and they'll do that when they're trying to avoid danger and not make a big splash as they dive loons also are very clumsy on land as edulis they are in the water they're not very good on shore they shuffle along on their bellies almost on the ground in fact the name loon originates from a Scandinavian root limb which means clumsy in the quake on Indian tradition common loons shouldn't be eaten by young p. . People are by women of childbearing age because they will acquire the clumsiness and the slowness of the Loon our birds have been down for quite a while but I can see some bubbles I think I know where they are online along here in our canoe well being as beautifully adapted as the looniest to life in the water makes it harder for these birds to fly they can't burst up from the water like a lot of ducks can you know how in Malibu a bomb erupt off the surface of the water balloons can do that they need a long run especially into the wind in order to get airborne so they can only live on pretty good sized lakes for example this one is about a mile long and almost a mile wide when it's calm they've got to run along the water for several 100 yards in order to get up in the air but once the common loon is in the air very swift flyer during migration the average 75 miles an hour so once they get going these very strong large birds can fly very well oh my goodness one of the loons came swimming right straight toward me when almost under the bar the canoe and I can see it on the right side right now pumping both of its feet not alternately but both at the same time and I can see the legs reach out to the side not underneath its body as you would expect in the bird now snaking its neck back and forth stops and fixes its eyes as if by keeping still it can better see its prey bobs up on the right side of the canoe here and now looking down underwater again completely unconcerned that I'm quite close to it a little while ago I saw him come up with something in its beak took a picture and then I looked at it and by golly it was a snail there are a lot of snails in this lake. They'll also while they're down there sometimes snatched little piece ised stones from the bottom looms will generally have 10 to 20 little rocks in their gizzards and that helps to grind up the bones in the shells of their prey like the snail shells now here on the lake that they claim as their home they'll show up as soon as the ice thaw in the spring time smaller lakes like this one will usually have just one pair of loons and big ones that go on for miles and miles will sometimes have multiple pairs each claiming its own Bay or its own part of the lake loons will claim nesting territories and let me tell you they're exclusive about it the pair on this lake for example will chase off and the other loons that are foolish enough to land here loons will chase each other around they'll attack each other try to spear him with these beaks grab their necks drive the head of their enemy underwater can even dive underneath the water and come up and kill another loon by spearing it with this powerful beak that they have so it's not a joking matter loons are serious about territoriality loons like to build their nest right next to the water then they don't have to struggle to walk on land they prefer their nest to be surrounded by water built on a little island or on top of a muskrat house that surrounded by water any place that makes them feel safe maybe on a matter of vegetation where they can get away from predators like goals Ravens mean foxes that will eat their eggs if they can find them well if all goes well about a month after loons lay their eggs there unthinkably cute little downy chicks are hatched in those little chicks you'll sometimes seem if you're lucky riding on the back of one of their parents they like to snuggle down under the wing that covers them up keep some warm keeps them safe from any predators predators like the great big pike. That live in these lakes like the peregrine falcons silhouetted against the sky on top of this very of sheer mountain at the edge of the lake eagle's gulls can also be a danger to Loon chicks the little birds will grow slowly it takes about 3 months before they are big enough to start diving and flying on their own so there's a long period of dependency it's not until late summer that the young ones can get along by themselves oh my goodness listen. There it is again the classic sound of a loon calling on a wilderness Lake their most vocal these birds in the early summer when their mating establishing their territories but they'll keep calling all the way through the summer and sometimes into the early fall the call any time but they especially like to call in the middle of the night now you have to remember middle of the night here north of the arctic circle means it's just not as bright as it is during the middle of the day after all this is the land of the Midnight Sun It never gets anything like dark here at this time of year now the common loon has several different calls and I've been recording these over recent days one is the tremolo or the laughing call sounds sort of like crazy laughter it's one people like to try to imitate and that Weaver in quavering laughing call can mean alarm it can mean annoyance where it can just be a kind of a greeting it gave rise that laughing call to the expression crazy as a loon har looney because it does kind of sound like a demented cult laugh. So that's the tremolo or laughing call of the common loan now under the best of circumstances it's estimated that common loons can live 15 to 30 years and so Stephen groups who have been staying here along this lake for 25 years do believe that it may in fact be this very same pair of loons that they have kept company with every summer since they came here 25 years ago but that's under the best of circum