Digital Extra

So if you think that Rhode Island's oil spill grieves only those of us who live here, think again.

The legacy of poison could reach by April to Squam Lake, in New Hampshire -- the "Golden Pond" of filmdom where Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn played out old age to the cry of the loon.

And it could be felt on the cold, deep lakes of the Adirondacks of New York, and in Minnesota's Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.

Elizabeth Wood, 85, loves the loons of Golden Pond. She and her husband Rawson -- "a little bit older" is all she'll allow -- live much of the year at water's edge on Squam Lake and have for decades.

They pack up for Boston -- reluctantly -- in November and return in April -- as do the loons.

"I think we go there because of the loons," says Elizabeth.

When you live on Golden Pond you get to know the loons as individuals; they come back to the same spot each year and each speaks in a distinctive voice.

Rawson Wood, a conservationist in his retirement from industry, knows the loons better than most. He drives the lake shore with a dish receiver on his pickup to record their plaintive wails and laughing tremolos.

This year, a nesting site or two at Squam, and the other lakes, could be silent, their would-be tenants back in Rhode Island -- clumps of bones and feathers.

"A terrible thing -- dreadful," says Elizabeth, who is intently following this outrage along our south shore. "The loons are so songful and so haunting."

Maybe it's a little thing in cosmic terms. Some loons die wintering over in South County; next spring the coves and inlets of distant lakes are imperceptively quieter.

But it's more than that to David Erler, 41, a biologist at Squam Lake who sees the loon in human terms.

He'll tell you that the bird mates for life, or nearly so; that each couple cares carefully for its offspring; that the sound of the loon skims far over the water through evening and morning.

When a loon fails to appear, says Erler, its absence is ominous. The bird is so sensitive to pollution that it's like a barometer for trouble. A canary in a coal mine, so to speak.

The cry of the loon is an anchor in this life, says Erler, explaining, "It's comforting to know that they're out there, doing their thing."

Just so, says Mrs. Wood. The cry of the loon is essential on Golden Pond -- in the day and in the night.

For whatever reason, we relate to this spectral, mysterious creature. So yesterday I put the question of why to Erler. No doubt, I said, it's because we see in the loon many human characteristics.

No, he said -- I had it all wrong. So he put me straight:

"You might say it's we who have loon characteristics -- after all, they've been around a lot longer."

Gerry Goldstein is the Journal-Bulletin's regional editor for South County.