by Mike Lynn MenLiving Board President
Myles said it from halfway up a tree overhanging a creek while I stood ankle-deep in mud below.
A few minutes earlier, we had been enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning kayak trip. Now we were trying to save a robin.
We had spotted the bird from the water—a strange fluttering in the branches above the creek. Drawing closer, we saw it tangled in carelessly discarded fishing line, struggling desperately to free itself.
“We have to help her,” Myles said.
I might have drifted on and assumed nature would take its course. Instead, I found myself nodding. At that moment, this tiny life felt more important than our plans for the morning.
“Come on. Today we are doing something important,” he said. Myles beached his kayak and immediately started forming a rescue plan.
“I’ve got a knife. I’ll climb the tree. You spot me,” he said.
By the time I dragged my own kayak ashore and scrambled through the mud, he was already halfway up the trunk.
“What do you think?” he called down.
“You’re on the right branch. If you can cut it, we may be able to reach her.”
The robin’s struggles intensified as the branch shifted under Myles’ weight. Suddenly, the bird slipped free of the branch but remained suspended upside down, tangled by its feet.
We couldn’t leave it like that.
“If I climb higher, I might be able to break the branch,” Myles said.
I looked at the water below.
“Is it worth the risk?”
That’s when he answered:
“It’s a life.”
In three words he conveyed compassion, conviction, urgency, and courage.
Then everything changed.
“It got free!”
Neither of us had seen it happen. Somehow the robin had worked loose and fluttered to the ground instead of falling into the creek.
“We have to find it!”
Moments later we spotted it scrambling through the brush with injured wings. Myles coached me from a distance.
“Move in from behind. Use both hands.”
I had never tried to catch an injured bird before. After several failed attempts, we finally cornered it near my kayak, and Myles gently gathered it into his hands.
For the first time since our frenetic rescue started, we paused.
The robin was safe.
Now what?
“See if you can find animal control or a rescue shelter,” Myles said, both hands cupping the bird.
I called. No answer.
“Maybe the police can help. Their station is right over there, across the creek and about a hundred yards to the right. You need to go there and try to get something we can put her in to get her to help.”
The bird had been trying to wiggle out of Myles’ gentle grasp, but was starting to settle. Its feet protruded from below, and they were bleeding on his hands, but it seemed ok for the moment.
“Ok. Got it.” Myles had done the hard work so far, but now I had a mission.
“We will be here, just chilling…but can you take our picture first? This feels so good.” 
I clicked a quick shot. Myles looked gentle, somber, and protective, and the bird turned its head toward me as if to pose for the picture with its rescuer.
I paddled across the creek and headed toward the police station. The lone officer on duty couldn’t help, but a few vendors at a nearby farmers market could.
Within minutes, one kind vendor offered a flat soft cushion. Another found a small box.
Mission accomplished.
I returned quickly to my kayak and paddled back across the creek, feeling hopeful.
Myles was sitting exactly where I had left him, the robin still cupped gently in his hands.
But something had changed.
“It stopped moving,” he said softly.
We placed the bird in the box and sprinkled a little water on it, hoping for a response.
Nothing.
Myles carefully lifted it out and tried gently compressing his fingers into the bird’s chest. “Bird CPR,” he said hopefully.
Still nothing.
The robin had died.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
After everything—the climbing, the scrambling, the chasing, the mission to the other side, the hoping—we had still lost her.
“I didn’t want it to end this way,” Myles said quietly.
Neither did I.
We considered taking the bird with us and giving it a proper burial, in the ambulance-turned-possible-coffin provided by kind strangers.
Instead, Myles shook his head.
“No. Let’s return it to the circle of life.”
He carried the robin into the trees and gently laid it down among the leaves. Then he stood silently beside it for a moment before returning.
Back on the water, we continued our journey.
“We did our best,” I said. “Without us, it would have suffered much more.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I guess. I just don’t know. This really is getting to me.”
The conversation drifted, but the robin stayed with us.
Soon the creek fed into the faster-moving Des Plaines River. We paddled through a stretch of swift water beneath a viaduct, the current carrying us forward. It felt exhilarating—movement, freedom, momentum.
By the end of our adventure, we’d spent a few hours talking about life: family, relationships, work, challenges, and having some good laughs along the way. In our MenLiving time, that’s what it’s all about.
But that particular morning’s living gave us a chance to try saving a little bird. That morning’s living put life and death in our hands, as we floated among the trees on a peacefully flowing creek.
Sometimes you go with the flow. Sometimes our wings get caught in fishing line. Sometimes we’ll encounter compassion, courage, and connection.
For Myles and me, that small robin’s life mattered.
“It’s a life…”
For Chicago area members of the MenLiving community (or visitors from out of town), Myles owns enough kayaks for a small group outing, and gets out on the water frequently. Contact Myles Slaughter-Fey (smyleslaughter@gmail.com) or Mike Lynn (mikel@menliving.org) to plan future informal “Men Paddling” outings.
