Harris
Harris's Sparrow taken by Peter Schoenberger“Harris is still there,” Peter tells me.
This has been his report every few days, since the 26th of November. Harris is the Harris’s sparrow he found on November 26 in Berks County Pennsylvania while we were visiting his sister in Kempton. Almost a full month later, and Harris is still there.
“And people are still going out to look for it?” I ask, a bit surprised at the determination of birders.
“It’s an important bird,” Peter says, as if stating the obvious.
Christmas Bird Count 2011
“There are three things you can count on today,” I told Laura, who was along for her first Christmas Bird Count. “Around eleven in the morning you will wonder why you signed on to do this. Around three in the afternoon you’ll wish you were home asleep. And at the end of the day you will be elated.”
This was my second Christmas Bird Count and the memory of my first count was vivid for me. Last year had been exhausting and exhilarating and I had been looking forward to this day more than to Christmas itself. Like for all good holidays, I’d spent the day before cooking so that we’d have good chicken soup to eat in the field. We’d gone to bed early and I rose at 3 am, full of hope, just as I had as a child when I still believed in Santa. Now, I believed in owls. To find an owl, you have to believe in owls.
Arctic Dreams
“Sometimes there’s an owl, and sometimes there isn’t,” explains Pa in Jane Yolen’s beautiful book, Owl Moon. And what I want to add is: those “sometimes” are not of equal weight. It should read: very infrequently there is an owl, but every now and again when you are super lucky there is an owl. But that is too clunky and it’s important to keep hope, especially for children.
I am a person of hope, which means I spend a lot of time looking up pine trees for owls. I have been rewarded a few times, especially last January when I found a long-eared owl. But if I clocked the number of hours I look for owls, I would be embarrassed.
Perfect Fall Days
Perfect fall days are a particular torture.
Perfect: Blue sky, cool, sun, a crisp snap to the air. Apple days. Cliched days.
Torture: You know they won’t last. There’s nothing you can do to properly celebrate them, short of being outside all day. And even then a sense of desperation tugs at my skin.
When I was younger the only way to do justice to these days was to rock climb. Sitting on a ledge, looking down into a valley of yellow, orange and red tinged trees, while the turkey vultures soared below me was heaven. The pull and tug of climbing, the sore fingertips, the dusty smell of chalk on my hands all aligned with the wrestle with the day, which was the wrestle of my soul. The way I knew I had taken all the day had to offer was walking out at dusk or in the dark, the clank of climbing gear a sort of music. My climbing partner and I were always hungry and tired and satisfied.