As I began writing this on Wednesday, I was reading Helen Whybrow’s memoir, The Salt Stones, which focuses on her family, her ninety-some Icelandic sheep, and how as a pastoralist she lives within the rhythm of her animals, the trees and grasses, blueberries and shrubs, the soil microbes and those in our gut, and all that lives in and on, over and above that soil and makes of her two hundred acres a thriving ecosystem. Her husband is kind, her step-daughter has gone off to live her life, and soon her daughter will follow. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t always know her daughter, but is the same kindly person for all that. I read the final chapter yesterday. I felt grateful for the beauty she shares.

On our walks this week, I gathered my favorite spotted feathers and carried home the entire skeleton of a tiny bird—all the bones clean of flesh but cartilage still holding them together, feathers stuck, the skull less that 2 centimeters, and the long white beak, like two toothpicks tipped in black. I don’t know the species, but I’ll search my bird book and see if I can figure it out.

We saw twenty pelicans the other day resting on the sand, then a lessor kingfisher flying up and down the mouth of Asbury Creek, the pair of black oystercatchers, a hundred gulls at Asbury Creek, and the pair of mature eagles on our way home. Gary was disturbed to see another recently dead mature gull today, the fourth apparently healthy adult in the past few days. Yesterday, I counted eight birds. Dead birds are common this time of year and we’ve seen grebes and a cormorant, but it’s usually the juveniles who die in the stormy weather. Temperatures have been mild, but we’ve had a couple of storms, and one morning this week it was cold, 37° when we went out just after dawn. According to one source: “Over the course of the year, the [local] temperature typically varies from 40°F to 67°F and is rarely below 32°F or above 75°F.” One late December in the 1980s, temperatures dropped into the teens and didn’t rise above freezing for the week over New Year. It hasn’t done that again in the forty years since, but lately, we’ve had summer days where temperatures rose into the 80s. The cool, moderate climate remains one of our favorite aspects of living on the coast. We have lived on this shore for most of our married life. We have repeatedly adjusted our partnership. When I was home with preschool children, I also fulfilled the traditional women’s work. I scrubbed floors, made meals, but even then Gary did the laundry. When I went back to work, Gary took over dishes and most cleaning. When he retired, he paid the bills. When I retired, I took back bill-paying. Our roles have been determined by convenience and aptitude, habit and preference, less about gender.

Same sex partners are common among birds and fish—a fact I was aware of as a young child because I read a lot and kept tropical fish. As an adult, I became increasingly aware of how fluid gender identity can be in many species. Whybrow describes intersex sheep, and among all species, there is no “confusion” about gender identity, only a variety of both gender and sexual expression. Yes, life and death, but living is not a binary experience.

People are more complicated. We make things more complicated. We have prejudices about how people assigned male or female should act, dress, talk, and partner. Angelfish choose a mate for life and never change their clothing or follow influencers. They pair bond, and done. Humans ask much of themselves, of others, and demand people fit into tidy boxes.

Tidy binary boxes don’t suit our inclinations or our biology. We are various.

The Washington Post describes the most recent review of literature about transitioning children, released this past spring by the Department of Health and Human Services, which has now been peer-reviewed. The “careful, 409-page systematic review” of the evidence and ethical considerations for pediatric medical transition suggests we might pause until we know more. “The most contestable conclusion of the HHS report, and the place where critics are apt to get the most traction, is that ‘it is not ethical to subject adolescents to hormonal and surgical interventions … even in a research trial, until and unless the state of the evidence suggests a favorable risk/benefit profile for the studied intervention.'”

The personal becomes political becomes personal.

Our understanding and assumptions about and perceptions of sexuality and gender involve biology, psychology, sociology, physiology, and overwhelming cultural bias. There is also personal experience to consider. But over and over we fall back onto stereotypes. Women are like this, men this other thing, gay men something else again, lesbians—the whole ugly list of bigotry. People are marvelous in their differences. Wonderful—full of wonder. That is my experience, my assumption. My belief is that those differences should be honored.

My own bias is to leave well enough alone. If someone identifies male, they should be free to be who they feel themselves to be and shouldn’t need surgery or artificial hormones to prove it. But I am an old woman disinclined to wear make-up. I gave our sons dolls and forbade them to play with toy guns. Their father fell asleep in their room while they played with Legos. They are good men by any measure.

Identity is complicated and no one has the right to say what is real or true to anyone else. I’m not sure I always know what is real even for myself. It is a process of discovery. Culturally, we look for conformity. Why would gender and sexual identity be any different in our culture that demands that conformity, that we must look and act and reason in particular ways conforming to our appearance? How unnatural is that?

Animals have no such demands. Biology is only part of our destiny.

Male birds have the doubled sex chromosome the way female mammals do [YY for male birds, XX for everything else with a spine that is female]. Biologists now believe that the XX carried by women is one reason they live longer—they have an extra copy of that X, which conveys a biological advantage. [I don’t know that anyone has done a thorough study of birds to determine of the YY conveys a similar advantage.]

Biologists and popular writers have looked for other explanations for women’s longer lives that aren’t reliant on their biology. There are behavior patterns and cultural expectations that impact [shorten] lifespans for human men; women have childbirth impacting theirs. But all things being equal, and even though they never are, women live longer and this proves true throughout history and all over the world. The difference in life expectancy between men and women is consistent but small—less than five years, on average. Maternal, infant, and child mortality is low in wealthier nations, though relatively high in the United States, yet even in first world nations people die at birth and at every age, and women outlive men. Life ends, though that ending may occur before first breath or after a hundred years.

The differences in our individual lifespans are determined by our inherited biological health but also by the air we breathe, the water we drink, our diet and habits, stress and loss, the risks we take and the damage we suffer from exposure to poisons and disease, to both necessary and chosen surgeries and other interventions that may improve life, allow life, or shorten it.

Be well. Be who you are.

As a final note: I finished reading that stunning memoir, and if I were still teaching, I would certainly share it. It is a book I would have been happy to reread each year. If I were a Biology teacher, I would assign half the class to read SILENT SPRING* and the other half to read THE SALT STONES. Discuss. Each author makes an impassioned plea for humanity, nature, ecology, and the survival of our souls. Each book is solidly grounded in the biology of this Earth.

Whybrow’s memoir is laced with deep knowledge about her place in the world and the world itself, from soil to sky, daughters to mothers, sheep and coyotes, everything that grows, everything and everywhere, inside and out. It is beautifully written, unsentimental but rich in sentiment, and wise about living n the world.

*Assigning complete books has recently gone out of style in high schools. The local curriculum director has insisted on excerpts only, YA novels are preferred by students and their teachers, and all this is having an ugly impact on college success. Years ago, I was shocked [I thought to write “disappointed” but no, “shocked” is the correct verb] to discover that the Marine Biology teacher at the high school where I taught had never read Rachel Carson. I was reading well over my head from the age of ten, I was reading horse books but also Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions in 6th grade. I also read entire assigned books every year in school and not only in English classes, but that doesn’t seem to happen much anymore.