I was catching up with a friend the other day and I asked how she was. She said, "Well, I'm okay I guess, considering how the world is." It was then I had two reactions at the same time. One was obvious, of course I knew how the world was. We were in the middle of the most authoritarian government this country has ever had, to my knowledge, and part of their project was to make the lives of trans people, of us, illegal. The other part seemed to be executing immigrants in the street and putting them in concentration camps. Suffice it to say, I knew what she meant.
The other reaction I had was one that came from a day that had just been spent birding. It was "I do know how the world is. The world is fucking magical." Ever since we got our first bird feeder last summer this is something that has been brewing inside me. This overwhelming awe at the world. The real world, you might even say. The natural world.
I've frequently been a person who does quite a bit of escapism. Living in people-world makes me feel fucking crazy, and so I, like many of my nerd-ass friends (Hi friends I love you) would dive into fantasy, sci-fi, video games, novels, fuckin'...actual play dungeons and dragons podcasts, et cetera. I've done it since I was a kid. Birding feels a lot like that. It's completely removed from every single other thing in my life. The world of birds does not give a shit about who I am. I am interchangeable with any other human who is moving in the same way and wearing the same color clothes. But they are aware of me. And the way they communicate, feed, live is so alien to someone who is used to people-living. It's an entire society, but more than that, because it's inter-species, inter-kingdom, they're interacting with plants and trees and bugs and rocks and dirt, shit that's operating on vastly shorter and longer timescales. It's so complex, so interesting. And I can drop right into it at any time. And so can you. The starting point is this: try playing a very simple game. Make a list of every species of bird you see, starting now and going your whole life. That's it. That's the game. Easy. At first it's very easy, but it gets harder, more interesting as you go. And it opens up EVERYTHING.
Okay, I don't want to do two of these "I was talking to a friend the other day" bits in a row, but I'm going to, okay? Because I was telling all of this to my friend Apple Blossom, and I said that it was exactly like escapism, but it was better, because it was escaping from this sort of constructed human society we're forced to live in to something that is far, far less constructed. Something that we are all a part of even when we pretend we're not. Even when we build up houses and hermetically seal them to keep air from coming in or out without climate control, to keep bugs out, to keep everything out so we can pretend we're not part of the world of nature but nature doesn't give a shit. Its time scale is so much slower and faster than you and you can't opt out. So what I am really "escaping" to is spending time participating and noticing what exists around us all the time. So I told all this to Apple Blossom and he said, "That's not escapism, that's immanence."
Today I went birding. I went to Theler Wetlands, my most frequent haunt. I only recently learned about the ecological importance of wetlands. How they basically filter and fix all the toxic shit that gets into nature. How something like 80% of animals spend some part of their lifecycle in wetlands. I know this is detour after detour reading this but guys I'm in AWE and its hard to turn it off. Like I think I knew this stuff before but I wasn't in awe.
Anyway I went to Theler Wetlands in Belfair, WA and fuck, it was raining so much. It was very cold and windy and rainy like it's been all winter (we had a brief sunny reprieve but now it's gone). I was out there, really kind of underdressed, just a sweatshirt under a raincoat, and the birds just kinda weren't showing themselves to me. There's so many places a bird can be and our eyes miss so much in all the visual complexity of woods or grasslands. I saw a brief glimpse of a Bewick's Wren, and was hearing Northern Flickers. I saw a small cloud of Red-Winged Blackbirds descend on a treetop and heard their glitchy songs. A few Robins laughing in a way that combined with the wind and cold and gray to sound positively haunted. Just a not-much day. I had two significant encounters though:
- On the way back from the long boardwalk a Great Blue Heron flew up and perched on the railing of the walkway. I took some photos, walked forward a bit. Took some more photos, walked forward a bit more. Etc, etc, repeat, repeat until finally it flew down to perch in the grass. "If nothing else at least I'll have a good photo or two of a Great Blue," I thought to myself. I'm tempted at this point in the text to post every single blurry photo I took of this heron. Because they really do all look like shit. Here's one:
You can really tell how good this would have been if it was in focus.
- Walking down the path I startled (we call it "flushed" in the birding biz) a raptor of some kind, and it flew out about ten feet in front of me and then briefly perched where I could see it. It was dark brown with white streaks on its chest and had yellow eyes. I later spent hours upon hours trying to teach myself hawk identification before the mental image faded and managed to scrape together the right combo of knowledge and memory to say I'm 75% sure it was an immature Cooper's Hawk. Not a life bird or anything, but very cool. I'm always down to have a close encounter with a big bird of prey so long as it isn't sad or terrifying.
Anyway, good trip. I'm up way too late on a work night writing this, but I couldn't sleep. My thoughts, like always, were with the birds.
Love you friends,
Sara