What's in a Name?
This story was written by John Hogeland, my husband and Head Rancher at Whippoorwill Creek Farm. He wrote this story several years ago in 2019 when we first moved to Iowa and started farming his family’s land.
A follow-up to the story is that John heard a Whippoorwill this past spring when I was away from the farm. We are eager to hear more next summer, and to someday catch sight of them too.
Whippoorwill Creek inhabits my earliest memories, days of sun and water, rain, freeze, and flood. It sustained my small self, encouraged my imagination and was my playmate when I had no other. This creek was my best and only pastime on chilly spring mornings, long summer days, crisp fall afternoons and frigid winter nights. There was not a season that it did not succor me in my solitude. It nearly consumed my life one winter flood when I walked on its swollen ice flows, and in a moment fell through into the frigid current. I barely had time to flounder when it spat me out onto a log across its stream.
Whippoorwill Creek is a 'secondary' stream in the annals, the smallest stream with a name, but large enough to carry water most days of a year. It meanders from south to north across our farm, joined by a smaller stream just south of the house once inhabited by my grandparents and, later, my parents.
The creek's bird namesake, the Whippoorwill, has abandoned its banks these many years. I remember the call, can still mimic it with my own whistle, that one that I haven't heard in so long. As I grew up that call became less and less frequent until one summer when I was 8, we heard only one lonely bird calling all summer for a mate, but no mate came. None have come since.
Man diverts waters, razes mature woodlands and fills streams with trash and toxic runoff. Open understory in the remaining mature woodlands fills over time as fire is suppressed. Non-native species dominate open spaces, ruining the Whippoorwill’s chosen habitat. It cannot adapt and has died trying.
Predators have also taken their toll on this ground-nesting bird of the Nightjar family. Before human extirpation (a very scientific phrase for 'to root out and destroy completely'), wolf, mountain lion, and bear kept the Whippoorwill's main predators, raccoon and coyote, under control. Since the reconfiguring of Iowa’s land into organized, flat fields over a hundred years ago and the end of wolves and bears in the region, the raccoon and coyote populations have burgeoned and they hunt the Whippoorwill unchecked.
I chose the name, Whippoorwill Creek Farm, an unconscious talisman calling the birds home.
It's a long name, difficult to fit into the small spaces paperwork allows and requires frequent spelling over the phone and in person. But it is beautiful, a name that has a deep meaning and connection to this place we now steward.
We are growing the trees and clearing the underbrush, eschewing the chemicals that make farming easier. I move my cows daily, not letting them trample too much or too long, fencing them away from the stream bed and banks of the creek, letting the wild riparian spaces return. For the wolves, bear and mountain lions, I can do nothing, though I would welcome them back. Against the raccoon and coyote the Whippoorwill must make its own way. I can only supply places to nest.
And sometimes as I travel the farm, the memory will come to me of that last Whippoorwill calling and calling, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will and I will call back with my own whistle - a placeholder for the time when these little birds will be heard again on this stream, on this farm that is so much a part of me.
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Thank you for illustrating this tender childhood memory with your words. So much of our childhood is sensory - the smells and sounds that evoke our cherished moments. And although there is sadness in the face of this evolution, your efforts for restoration are so vital. Thank you for paving the way.
John’s piece rekindled my own memories of “the creek” that ran through our Wayne County farm. It included a couple of big bends that were perfect swimming holes. One hole fell out of favor though when dad hauled out a big snapping turtle. The hissing and snapping was enough for us to thereafter respect ‘the monsters’ territory.