Journal of a Sabbatical

July 5, 1999

the heat goes on

Today's Starting Pitcher: Mark Portugal

All-Star Starting Shortstop: Nomar Garciaparra

Today's Reading: The Feather Quest by Pete Dunne, The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena by Louis J. Halle

What the heck is an "excessive heat alert"? Whatever it is, we're having one.

I brought The Feather Quest with me to Starbucks and read for an hour or so before Dan & Geri arrived and snagged me into conservation. When the air conditioning at Starbucks started to lose the battle against the heat and humidity, we all left. I huddled by the air conditioner at home reading until I finished it.

It suddenly occurred to me that the title sounds like some newage shamanistic thing, when it's really about a cross-country birding trip. The words feather and quest have both taken on connotations that work against the casual browser identifying this as a bird book.

I loved this book and highly recommend it. Dunne's style is very light and breezy although at times reaching towards that fake literary sounding pretentiousness - mostly it's very down to earth. He gives plenty of ink to both the joys and the pains of seeking out rare birds.

Besides the Newburyport section, I enjoyed his description of the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Florida and of course his trip to Churchill, Manitoba - one of those places all birders want to visit once in their lives.

I've not been to Churchill yet, but I did go to Ding Darling NWR once about 15 years ago. I remember seeing roseate spoonbills, anhingas, great blue herons, several kinds of egrets, and getting devoured by mosquitos. I was so itchy and swollen I ended up having to take tons of antihistamines and then sleep for a day in my hotel. Bugs love me. I am a real taste treat for all of biting-pest-kind.

Remembering the Florida experience also brought back memories of a Buddhist retreat I was on at Omega Institute in upstate New York where mosquitos invaded the main meditation hall and I struggled to accept them and not squash them. I was talking about this with Joan-west one time and she told me about Tibetan teachers who actually lift up their shirts and invite the mosquitos to bite them. I allowed as to how I would never reach that stage of enlightenment and wondered if the Tibetans ever encountered mosquitos that carry malaria. Of course, the mosquitos around here don't' carry malaria but they do carry Eastern Equine Encephalitis (which despite its name does infect and kill humans). I'm not at all sure I trust the universe to protect me from EEE in honor of my generosity to mosquitos. That said, I do try not to kill them during meditation and don't go after them if they're not going after me, but I do wear bug repellent.

Anyway, I liked reading about places I have been and the places I haven't been. I'm not a heavy duty lister like the author. I have a hard time ignoring all the "trash" birds to seek out the rarity. I'd much rather spend my time observing more about the relationship between American wigeons and hooded mergansers or timing the dives of buffleheads or documenting the mating displays of piping plovers than seeking out some rare little brown jobber just to check it off the list. I can see the attraction of listing, and Dunne's description of the World Series of Birding makes it sound second only to the actual World Series in excitement, but I just can't see myself going to the lengths of some of the people in the book.

The place I'd least like to go, despite its rich list of rare Asian species, is Attu. Dunne's description of racing from rare sighting to rare sighting on three speed bikes through rivers of mud and spending the night in concrete shelters with flooded floors just doesn't appeal to me. Reading that chapter, though, I recognized the description of Attu from a story that one of my former coffee buddies, John McClellan told me about skiing into the Japanese camp after the battle. John was in the elite ski troops in W.W.II and was stationed in the Aleutians, where Attu was the site of the only Japanese incursion onto North American soil. John's in his 90's now so he must have been a mature man even then, but it made a deep impression on him.

Gee, I keep associating weird stuff to all the places described in the book, but that's part of what made it so much fun. I'm kind of sorry I finished it.

Not having had quite enough of vicarious birding, and reluctant to plunge myself back into Meiji Restoration Japan just yet I picked up The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena again. Where Dunne's book was heavy on the joys of listing, Halle's is heavy on philosophy. The place where I left off was a whole chapter of nothing but philosophy. Birds are secondary. It gets more interesting though when he starts speculating on the nature of religion and g*d. I'm a sucker for anything attempting to explain religious faith. So here two of my interests, birds and religion, appear in one book. I wish he wove them together a little better, but I get the drift.

Halle accuses philosophy of being urban-centered and reminds us:

The vision of the urban philosopher, which excludes the Storm Petrel, is too narrow for the responsibilities that have become ours.

I prefer the descriptions of skuas and their nesting habits, but I have to admit he makes a good point. People are always asking me why we should bother to save the piping plover and the only answer I have is "for its own intrinsic value", whatever that may be. Actually, it wouldn't occur to me that we shouldn't ... guess I've already widened my vision beyond that of urban philosophy.