Silver Linings

I was given this food for thought recently:

There are only miracles. To one degree or another they all enrich the whole person. However, some are disguised as unpleasant surprises, botched circumstances, and twisted acquaintances that can rarely be seen for who or what they truly are until the pendulum has fully swung.

I got a call from dad late last night. So late, in fact, that I didn't hear the call. Then, a slightly confused message about a blood sugar drop, a call to 911 and a trip to the hospital. When I reached him this morning, I learned that she'd passed out on the bed just before bedtime, and didn't know who dad was when he tried to rouse her.

Her blood sugar is still bouncing around, so the doctors elected to keep her in the hospital through the night.

After her broken leg last week during my vacation, and now her trip to the hospital, I am looking forward to this pendulum swinging fully, so we all know what the miracle is. Seriously. Poor dear.

--Laura

The Wild Goose

ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

-- ee cummings (1894-1962)

Traditional Family Holiday

It takes time to establish a family tradition. Prepare, execute, rinse and repeat, if you will. There's mom's famous cornbread dressing. There's dad's Christmas wallet. There's setting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving.
Those traditions in my family have been fairly fluid. I respect that, because we're flexible. We're willing to adapt traditions based on schedules and the needs of the individual members of the family, but we still gather. We still celebrate.
Here's one item we seem to stick to each holiday. One member of the family ends up in the emergency room.
This year, it was mom.
Mom and I got up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, happy to be alive. We put harnesses on the dogs. We left the house for a walk. On the way back, mom slipped in leaves and went down like a bag of bricks, one leg in front of her, the other curled up behind her body. She landed hard on her left side, yelling out in pain. I was horrified. She looked like she'd broken her arm. I couldn't make myself leave her until she'd calmed down enough to sit up.
Then I raced back to the house, just a minute away, grabbed the keys to the car and drove back to retrieve her. She was standing by the time I arrived, and climbed into the car. We agreed not to tell dad.
At the house, she quietly asked me to drive her to the urgent care clinic. "I want someone to tell me it's just a sprain, because my ankle is really hurting."
Yeah, I really wish they could have told us that too. Because while it wasn't the ankle, it was the leg - not a sprain, a break.
So for the next 4 to 6 weeks, mom will have a splint on her leg. Fortunately, the bone didn't shift, so it is in a good location to heal. However, because she has neuropathy, the doctor is concerned that she wouldn't feel a shift if it did occur. So she will be returning to the doctor who will take more xrays to make sure she doesn't shift the bone during the healing process. If it does, she will need to have surgery to put a plate and screw in that location.
We are trying to avoid that. After the traditional gathering in the emergency room, we would like to be flexible about the outcome. No surgery this year, please. That doesn't fit around our schedules.
So I stayed a bit longer in Alabama this Thanksgiving. I am sitting in the guest bedroom right now, typing this out after packing for the trip home. There are thanksgiving leftovers in my cooler from the meal I prepared by myself while mom sat in a chair at the table and chopped vegetables.
By the way, the meal went great. Dad even had seconds of sweet potato casserole, and my dad doesn't eat sweet potato. That's something I won't forget for a while.
And as I leave, my thoughts remain with them - that they will keep their wits about them. That as mom heals, she'll stay safe. That they will keep their tempers in check as mom grows increasingly impatient with her confinement. Dad is not used to finding things in the house - that's mom's domain. But moving that walker over carpet is very difficult for my mom right now, so he will be the hunter and gatherer in the family for at least a month.
It's a real strain on that young marriage.
Happy Thanksgiving, to all your families and to all your traditions.

--Laura

Cochran Shoals - Birding for Babies

The morning after my owl prowl, I headed over to the Cochran Shoals. This bird walk, led by Audubon guides, was listed as an introductory walk, geared for kids.
Now this was a cute idea, in theory. The two guides had a box of smaller binos for children's hands and skill level. One had the birds app loaded on her ipod, allowing her to play the bird sounds we were hearing. When kids arrived, they were able to choose a sticker of their favorite bird.
Unfortunately, the children who arrived were a little younger than could handle the demands of outdoor birdwatching. Had they been able to view birds in captivity, for example at a rescue center, I think it would have been much easier to explain the point of birdwatching to them. It was also a busy walking area, with lots of noise and traffic. While the guides were very helpful, the trees we birded under were really tall, and the birds she pointed out were very small. I think it was seriously overwhelming.
I know of a small urban park near Atlanta where another Audubon guide has set up a small seating area complete with a half dozen bird feeders. This contained area, with lower hanging trees and lots of food sources would be the ideal spot for younger birders, in my opinion. You might still get kids too young to get the concept of using binos to spy on our feathered friends, but they would have more to see within a shorter distance. Then, once the kids had absorbed the concept of what birding was, they could take it further if they showed the interest.
I think it was no surprise that all but the oldest child, who had previous experience birding, lost interest quickly and departed for home.
That said, the introductory event was perfect for me. The guides were so informative, not only about birding as a hobby, but about the resources offered through the local Audubon chapter. They made the introductory master birding course sound much less intimidating.
Why not? More after the thanksgiving holiday.
Spotted today: cormorants, great herons, flickers, mallards, the usual chickadees and tufted titmice, redwing blackbirds, crows, downy and hairy woodpeckers, Canada geese, red bellied woodpeckers, ruby and golden crowned kinglets and a winter wren.

--Laura

The Sweetwater Owl Prowl

I've reached a milestone. I can now claim my first nighttime birding hike.
For this, I returned to Sweetwater Creek and joined my new favorite park ranger, along with 20 or so brave souls and short people, ready for the hike into the woods.
We first began our hike with a short presentation on the owls resident in our area, which isn't that many. The main resident is the Great Horned Owl, the most common owl in North America, so no surprise. The second is the Barred Owl. The third and last of the most common species in Georgia is the more diminutive Screech Owl. Listen to his call all the way through. He has a call like the whinny of a horse.
Don't you have to wonder how that happened?
For better or worse, this was the park ranger's strategy: take a CD Player along with us on the hike. At intervals, stop, turn on the CD player, which plays the call of the Great Horned Owl, look up in the sky and wait for something to happen.
And that's what we did. We did it next to the visitor's center. We did it where an owl had been spotted earlier in the month as people gathered for hayrides. We did it near the ranger's home, where he's heard then numerous times. Each time, it was the same.
We stood.
We stared.
We listened.
Some of us (me of course, because I fidget), turned in place. Look east. North. West. South.
That's because, as the ranger explained, Great Horned Owls have fringing on the tips of their feathers, so they can glide through the air, barely making a sound.
As we walked, the ranger told us all kinds of facts about these elusive animals. They were associated with wisdom in ancient times because they could be found near Egyptian temples. Their eyes are so big relative to their head that if it were as large as ours, their eyes would then be the size of grapefruits. Their hearing is so acute they can hunt just as accurately blindfolded as not, and hear a mouse doing damage in a cornfield a quarter of a mile away.
After no luck on our hike, he said, "I know of one other place we could try on this trail. Would you like to go?" We all agreed.
After another short walk, we stood in an open field, with tall trees on the perimeter. The CD player once again planed the call of the Great Horned Owl. Only this time, we got a response. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dark shape in the night sky, the silent silhouette of a Great Horned Owl. He was checking out our CD player, but definitely not threatened by it.
And we were thrilled. Because in seconds, he was gone again.
Someone declares, "Wow, a hawk!" I admit this. I felt pretty good about that. "That was the Great Horned Owl," I said quietly. A few seconds later, he decided to have another look at us, and he cut across the field, so we could see his wingspan and body clearly. Then he disappeared altogether.
In the quiet, I watched the CD player as the owl call drifted from it. With its huge round speakers glistening in the dark, I thought how it looked like two enormous eyes, and said, "I think that owl checked out the CD player and thinks it's one ugly owl."
And that was our introduction to nighttime owl watching. Has anyone else done it differently? The ranger warned us that we were in a hit or miss area. No one seemed too disappointed by the walk, the exercise or the experience. And I will admit it, I like listening to the ranger talk. He seems to know where every abstract, ancient or endangered plant, butterfly or bird resides within the entire state.
I know hunting for owls is an elusive task. Because the reality is this: we could have passed a dozen of them. They just weren't in the mood to play. But something else happens, in the hunt for them. You realize that you can walk through an area and miss so much if you aren't looking. Standing in the quiet field we'd just entered moments before, standing in the still of the night, standing quietly, we began hearing the snorts and rustles of unseen deer. We never did see them, in fact. We only heard them. But they'd been there the whole time. Just like that Great Horned owl. It highlights the part of birding I love, the part you typically do alone, without a crowd. Because a crowd of birders is never quiet. They don't run through the woods, true, but they are chatting, pointing out movement in the trees, and generally making their presence known to anything in the woods with acute hearing.
But. If you are quiet... If you are patient... They will become used to you. They will accept that you aren't a threat. And if you pay attention, you will develop the subtle realization that you aren't standing alone in a woodland field.
On this owl prowl, the woods were busy, and we weren't alone. I love that.

--Laura

Unburdening II

You know that post where I confessed I was eating like a diabetic, to avoid the wakeup call in 10 years where I actually AM a diabetic?
Well, around that time, I bought a sweet pair of jeans in a size smaller than I wear. Girls need tangible goals, and that was mine.
Today, I wore those jeans to brunch with a friend in Decatur. We went to Cafe Lily.
You know, because they fit.
Just saying.

-Laura

Walking the Sweetwater White Trail

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting Sweetwater Creek S.P. Pleasure, partly, because it's the closest state park to my home. I am famously 5-10 minutes late to other birding sites. Here, I was actually early.

My other observation is that when a birdwalk is run by a park ranger rather than an audubon volunteer, the park ranger waits for stragglers :-) Volunteers who are birding on their time leave right at the top of the hour, on the button, no exceptions. The park ranger is AT work already!

Now, before the birding, an aside about the Visitor Center at the park. As a state conservation park, the visitor's center was designed and built green. It was finished in 2006, classified as a LEED Platinum building. We got a tour of the rooftop garden. Just as the building was finished, they lost funding, so the proposed landscaping was left incomplete. This prompted the rangers to opt for native Georgia plants rather than invasive non-natives. They are also harvesting the seeds from locations from throughout the park system. So, they are slowly removing any non-native invasive plantings already there and replacing with Georgia native plantings.

There's another notable difference between ranger-led hikes and audubon hikes. The ranger know his park. He likes his park. His house is in the park. He wants you to see lots of his park. That means you're going on a hike, which includes watching birds. Whereas the audubon folks can spend twenty minutes in the parking lot, the ranger was having none of that.

So what did I learn this trip? I learned that I've learned. When it came to binocular skills, I was near the top of the pack. When it came to spotting birds, I was right in the center. When it came to identification, I was also right in the center. I learned the names of birders I'd seen on other hikes, and discovered that many of them were more amateur than I thought. I learned that I should have bought a Sibley book ages ago.

The other thing I learned from the park ranger. As I said, he knew his park, so as we birded, he pointed out areas where they had spent considerable time and energy eradicating those non-native plant species. For half the walk, I wondered why he was so proud of that. The native species taking over weren't more attractive, in my estimation, and some were downright scraggly. But at one point, he elaborated on how the native plants actually improved the landscape for birds. For example, while dense grass like you see on green lawns might look great, it doesn't give birds many places to hide while feeding. By contrast, the scrubby native grasses provided perfect places for them to dive down and pop back up, watching for predators and feeding in turn.

"The birds are coming back here," he said. "When you walk through here enough, you can actually tell where the native plants have taken over by the number of birds you see and hear. They actually differentiate between habitats that exist just a hundred yards apart."

What goes for birds also goes for butterflies. They are introducing butterfly counts at this park. And the numbers are slowly increasing.

It was like a light went off in my head. No longer was this native plant species thing a nice, slightly greenie thing to do, just as a bragging point. I'm sorry to all the people who already knew, but I did not. I did not know the native plants were healing the habitat.

Now I do. Thanks to a quiet park ranger.

--Laura

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Where you used to be,
there is a hole in the world,
which I find myself constantly
walking around in the daytime,
and falling in at night.
I miss you like hell.

post mortem

And here I am again.
The past few weeks have been a wonderfully busy time for me. Let me catch you up.
First. Welcome back, dad, to the land of the living. I got a call from dad the day he was released and back in his own home. You know those people who escaped from the Nazi concentration camps? I think they might have sounded like him. I know he is facing each day and there are still struggles. I think there's going to be cheering in the cove when he is able to walk to his second neighbor's mailbox. But right now, he's getting to his first neighbor's mailbox. You start somewhere, don't you? Go, dad.
Did I mention how much I enjoyed my visit to Colorado? It was short, which made it convenient and relatively inexpensive. The weather was outstanding. The highlight, however, was meeting new people who were genuinely hospitable and authentic. It was really nice to land and have a specific destination, one that didn't require a plastic key card.
When I got home, I got a Sibley guide. And if I ask, I know Connie will tell me again which birding magazines she recommends.
So, a few weeks have passed now. I have a good handle on what I walked away with after this trip. My next moves aren't clear to me. My timeline isn't clear either. But while I'm here, I still have work. The bridge I'm building to my next destination begins on this side. I've got a lot of learning left to do.
Next, I will tell you about my latest birding trip. In this timezone. For now.

--Laura

...

You know how sometimes you get your hopes up very high, you feel them lift, and then you find out it was wishful thinking?
Some days go like that.

--Laura

Stunning Halloween

This year, if I may offer some commentary on the weather in other states for a moment, Colorado had one of the most enjoyable Halloween weekends ever. The weather, in a word, was stunning.
I should add that I know this because I was there to see it in person.
If you haven't experienced it before, flying as a non-rev isn't as glamorous as it might seem. Here's the basic order of priority on flights: Priority Customers. Regular Customers. Active Employees. Corpses. Romans. You. I found out later that the flight sold out. This meant I was the last person cleared to fly. Imagine my walk of shame to the last - very last - empty seat in the plane. Luckily, I had an adorable suitcase that fit under the sit in front of me. I looked like a total pro.
Back to Colorado. I drove to Loveland that night and the next morning I was in the near "wilds" of Lyons, birdwatching in some of the nicest weather I ever expected to see in late October in the Rockies. I didn't go alone. In Loveland, I stayed with one of the nicest families I've met in years. And the next day, I met yet another member of the family, and we went birdwatching. There, two time zones from home, I danced each time I spotted a new bird for my life list.
It's tradition. How could I not?
Later, Saturday afternoon, I had time in Longmont. So I parked the car. I strolled Roosevelt Park. I went to Thompson Park, named for Elizabeth Rowell Thompson. A Boston reporter in 1899 called her the "founder of Longmont, Colorado".
I passed beautiful trees in full color. I watched squirrels with no surival instincts bury nuts in piles of leaves because they had so many to choose from it didn't matter if they buried them well. And as I walked between parks, I passed homes with front yards being diligently raked by teenagers, most of whom seemed to be scheming. Leaf piles for boobie traps. Leaf piles for decoration. Leaf piles for Halloween. It was charming and relaxing.
And Sunday, before returning to Denver, I took another walk around Golden Ponds. My poor camera was dead, but my cell phone took some of the best pictures of my trip. And later I met up with one of the finest Longmontian citizens ever. My host and I had coffee, talked and strolled around the heart of Main Street. The weekend was short, but it went as smooth as glass.
At one time I envisioned that I'd use standby travel to visit Colorado monthly. My needs regrettably changed and that plan changed too. But this trip reminded and refocused my attention on the importance of regular visits. Standby limitations may limit my ability to travel during the holidays, but I think it's going to be different in the new year, and I think it should be.
Thanks to all my hosts. It was truly a stunning Halloween weekend. I couldn't have asked for more. I hope one day in the future, I can return the favor.

--Laura