Bad Water, Beautiful Flowers
One guide for Death Valley writes that people go to National Parks to get away from the stress of the outside world. And then they come to Death Valley to get away from the crowds of the other National Parks. I’ll agree to the first statement, but not to the second. When I hiked Theodore Roosevelt Park I saw no one in five hours; at Crater Lake, I snow-shoed out alone. In Death Valley: lines of cars waited in the lot so that people could park then saunter out below sea level and experience the frying relentless sun. Caught unaware, everyone turned some shade of sweaty pink. In March. In the campground my little tent wedged between two RVs, the couples cheerfully grazing their way through retirement in the National Parks. “What’s not to love?” one said, sweeping a hand toward the horizon. What’s not to love? That there are no birds.
One guide for Death Valley writes that people go to National Parks to get away from the stress of the outside world. And then they come to Death Valley to get away from the crowds of the other National Parks. I’ll agree to the first statement, but not to the second. When I hiked Theodore Roosevelt Park I saw no one in five hours; at Crater Lake, I snow-shoed out alone. In Death Valley: lines of cars waited in the lot so that people could park then saunter out below sea level and experience the frying relentless sun. Caught unaware, everyone turned some shade of sweaty pink. In March. In the camp ground my little tent wedged between two RVs, the couples cheerfully grazing their way through retirement in the National Parks. “What’s not to love?” one said, sweeping a hand toward the horizon. What’s not to love? That there are no birds.
Ok, there were a few birds. The Brewer’s Blackbird, a cousin to my favorite, the Rusty (yes, I have a favorite and it’s an easily overlooked, un-colorful, tuneless fellow) came skidding in a flock to my tent the minute I set up no doubt looking for a handout. A long-tailed Grackle sang its cranky song atop a tree, pointing its bold black beak skyward. I kept hoping for something surprising to show up. And what I got was a Pipit tip-toeing its way along one of the rare little creeks, this one salty with a population of Pupfish eeking out their tough fish lives. But a land that doesn’t hold an abundance of birds can’t long hold my attention. And if birds know they don’t belong in Death Valley, then neither do we?
Death Valley is a park you drive, viewing the natural world from the inside of an air-conditioned car. Everyone raced (literally—I puddled along at 45 miles an hour and everyone zoomed past me, as if we were in downtown LA) from one sight to the next: Bad Water, Artist’s Palette, Dante’s Lookout. And then, by the side of the road, a car pulled over and a woman with her easel, painting the landscape filled with yellow flowers, or a couple strolling out, taking selfies. The desert is in bloom. News of the bloom brought many of these people to the park, the desert in bloom high on the bucket list of one couple I spoke to. These people had driven for hours for flowers.
That thought floated through my head for the two days I spent in the park. Of course we see flowers all the time, out the backyard or in pots by the local bank. But flowers where they don’t belong, where they are unexpected, where they color up a vast and brown gray landscape—that is worth driving hours for. And as much as I bristled at the crowds, I also love that people are motivated to venture out, for flowers. Anything that survives in this landscape—the Grackles or the Pupfish or those short-blooming flowers—should be celebrated. I did, then packed up and left.
Teddy, I love you
West of Dickinson, North Dakota, the land mounds up, mini volcano-shaped hills made of a beige gray clay or sand, punctuated by sage brush and grasses. The texture of the land was a relief; the previous six hours of driving had offered expanses to the horizon, cultivated land, flat and harmonious. I had enjoyed that great sense of empty flat land while chuckling over the joke my cousin told me:
What is the North Dakota state tree?
A telephone pole.
True, there are few trees punctuating this North Dakota land. Those I saw huddled together, braced against wind or farmers.
But now I was in a land largely untouched and certainly not by a tractor, speeding into the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I think of Teddy as a privileged easterner who headed west from time to time to hunt. The story told here is that he came to shoot his bison and stayed for several years, buying two ranches. In that rugged landscape, he became tough enough to become President of our country. He owes his greatness to this landscape.
It was what he saw out west that convinced him that we had remarkable natural resources and that we were not conserving them for the future. In the case of the bison—he arrived in the nick of time.
Theodore Roosevelt did not protect this park I drove into and hiked for two days, but it is named to honor the fact that he preserved over 230 million acres of land during his presidency. This park needs protecting: just outside its borders are the pumps, fracking into this land.
West of Dickinson, North Dakota, the land mounds up, mini volcano-shaped hills made of a beige gray clay or sand, punctuated by sage brush and grasses. The texture of the land was a relief; the previous six hours of driving had offered expanses to the horizon, cultivated land, flat and harmonious. I had enjoyed that great sense of empty flat land while chuckling over the joke my cousin told me:
What is the North Dakota state tree?
A telephone pole.
True, there are few trees punctuating this North Dakota land. Those I saw huddled together, braced against wind or farmers.
But now I was ready for a little change and I had it, wandering into land largely untouched and certainly not by a tractor, speeding into the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I think of Teddy as a privileged easterner who headed west from time to time to hunt. The story told here is that he came to shoot his bison and stayed for several years, buying two ranches. In that rugged landscape, he became tough enough to become President of our country.
It was what he saw out west that convinced him that we had remarkable natural resources and that we were not conserving them for the future. In the case of the bison—he arrived in the nick of time.
Theodore Roosevelt did not protect this park I drove into and hiked for two days, but it is named to honor the fact that he preserved over 230 million acres of land during his presidency. This park needs protecting: just outside its borders are the pumps, fracking into this land.
I confess Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting exploits and manner made me ignore him as a president. That is, until I started birding. He—with a snap of the finger—created the first bird reserve at Pelican Island to protect the Egrets and other wading birds from plume hunters. To this he added 50 more bird reserves, what we now know of as National Wildlife Refuges.
And here is why I love him more: not only did Roosevelt care about birds he cared about how people wrote about birds and the natural world. In his “nature fakers” essay he sets forth his ideas on how we should be faithful to nature—have more of a scientific eye—and avoid giving human characteristics to animals.
In honor of Roosevelt’s wish, I will not anthropomorphize the meditative, cautious Bison I encountered on my hikes, or the joyous, coy Prairie Dogs, or the gentle, intent feral horses. Promise.
What I noticed first when I parked at Peaceful Ranch to hike up the Plateau Trail was the flock of Turkey. Second was that I had the parking lot to myself. I believe, in fact, that on this early February day, I had the whole park to myself, 110 square miles of sage brush and prairie, a cottonwood by the frozen stream, or a cluster of cedar trees. The temperatures hovered in the low twenties and a wind kept things lively. I slid across the frozen Little Missouri river and up a steep trail, the soft clay earth crumbling under my feet. I did not expect to see many birds in this rough landscape but soon a half dozen Pheasant exploded from the earth and flew off. At the top of my climb, a plateau extended for over a mile in front of me, dramatic buttes in the distance. The plateau was punctuated by gravelly mounds, and perched atop them were Prairie Dogs, standing at attention, whistling danger to each other. Or some draped over their holes, short sharp tails cocked, wagging to their kin. From afar I could see Prairie Dogs bounding home to safety. They would not simply disappear into their holes, but watch me as I walked past (pose nicely for a photo), assessing the danger. As I strolled along, a flock of grouse put up. I followed their insistent wing beats to the near horizon. Land, I whispered. And they did, coasting in on outstretched wings. I walked slowly, wanting to get close enough to be sure they were Sharp-tailed Grouse.
At the intersection of the Mah da hay trail, I continued further out, onto the plateau, into the park. Soon enough my way was obstructed by a herd of bison. I stood at a happy distance and admired the big creatures, grateful that some remain.
My descent was punctuated by two Golden Eagles soaring overhead—that seems about right. And an encounter with a blue-eyed horse. I shouldn’t write this, but he did wink at me.
I believe he is both winking and smiling
Sax Zim Bog at Dawn
Sax Zim Bog at dawn is even more empty than at mid-day, the narrow snow packed roads squeaking beneath my tires. In front of me, the sun turns pink orange through spruce and tamarack, those spindly deciduous conifers. I’m out in my car, heat turned high, hoping to see what everyone has flown or driven to see in this Northern Minnesota bog: a Great Gray Owl.
It’s a foolish thing to go looking for owls, because you have to accept that you won’t see one. In Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon, Pa takes his little girl out owling. He hoots for the owl, and we learn this: “sometimes there’s an owl and sometimes there isn’t.” What it takes to look for an owl is many things—hope and being brave in the night. But the most important thing is that to see an owl you have to go out, into the woods, into the world. It wasn’t going to come to me.
Sax Zim Bog at dawn is even more empty than at mid-day, the narrow snow packed roads squeaking beneath my tires. In front of me, the sun turns pink orange through spruce and tamarack. In my car, heat turned high, I'm hoping to see what everyone has flown or driven to see in this Northern Minnesota bog: a Great Gray Owl.
It’s a foolish thing to go looking for owls, because you have to accept that you won’t see one. In Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon, Pa takes his little girl out owling. He takes her into the dark woods, and hoots for the owl. What we learn is this: “sometimes there’s an owl and sometimes there isn’t.” What it takes to look for an owl is many things—hope and being brave in the night. But the most important thing is that to see an owl you have to go out, into the woods, into the world. It wasn’t going to come to me.
I spent the day before driving the roads of Sax Zim, taking in the size of the 200 square miles of boreal bog and forest where these owls spend the winter. Needle in a haystack comes to mind as the most appropriate cliché. But I dutifully checked in at the visitor’s center, which lists where certain birds have been seen. I learn that in 2005 in one weekend 450 Great Grays were counted. Maybe it’s not impossible. But the brusque woman at the visitor center tells me it’s a slow year. No Northern Hawk Owls. Few Great Grays. She doesn’t leave me hopeful.
I drive for hours, hunched over the steering wheel staring first into dense evergreens, then open fields, brushy, burnt orange in the gray northern light. I stop. I get out, walk. It seems silly to walk, the horizon infinite—what am I walking toward? But I’m walking just to move my legs, to escape the heat of the car, the ache of my eyes peering up, out, for anything: a shape, movement. An owl with a big head, punctuated by yellow eyes, and a neat white bow tie.
Though I am looking for that owl, I also am also looking for boreal birds that make this place home: Gray Jays or Boreal Chickadees, the brilliant Evening Grosbeaks. I stop at feeders that welcome birders. At each one, a half dozen feeders hang from poles, like an oasis in this boreal desert. I find Redpolls, with their blazing red caps, and Pine Siskins zipping into the air. At one, mid-woods, someone has smeared peanut butter on a log, and in come Red Squirrels to delight in the fat. I encounter a couple from Minnesota, also driving about looking for birds. He has a big camera and tells me that this winter is slow. We shift from one foot to the other, though it’s not that cold, hovering around 20 degrees under a gray gray sky. But if you stand still in 20 degrees you get cold.
“There’s a Bor-Ee-al,” the man says, pointing. I think he’s saying Burrito, so pause for a moment before putting up my binoculars. I land on the spunky chickadee with the auburn flanks and think a burrito would be good.
I spend the dusk hours hunched over my steering wheel, trying not to slide off the road, while also scanning the dense trees in the dimming light. I think owl thoughts. I say owl prayers. And then it’s so dusky amongst the trees, that I let myself relax, my gaze fade. I won’t have an owl. It’s at that moment that I see it, perched like a pumpkin in a spruce tree. I’m shaking as I stop, open the door, hoping the bird has not flown off. I so have Great Gray on the brain that for a moment I think that is what I’m looking at. And then the bird swivels its big head and looks at me through its squinty eyes, and I realize I’m staring into a face that is utterly familiar, a bird that lives in my backyard, a Barred Owl. I refuse to be disappointed. It’s an owl.
At dawn the next day, I drive out, hopeful and brave. Brave in the cold and silence. A silence so deep it burrows into the soles of my feet as I stand on a snow caked unpaved road flanked by spruce, Norway pine, and tamarack, those funny evergreens that are not. I walk the Overton/Owl Road location as the sun rises. It’s emptiness and me. I troll out to Admiral Road where a man is staring at the feeders and wondering what the Gray Jays are called. Canada Jays the man the day before said. He tells me he’s had Great Grays there on Admiral at two in the afternoon. He tells me of all of his owl sightings, flips through his pictures to show me. And I hate him.
I run into a cluster of cars, one local and one with two men, one from Louisiana, the other Baltimore. A Great Gray was sighted that morning. We scan the fields, swap stories, get cold. A local hauling a snowmobile pulls over. He’s got a long unkempt beard, and is not wearing a jacket. “I want to thank you for pulling over to the side of the road,” he says. He holds a cigarette in one hand like he might light it, but never does. He tells us about other birders not so considerate, and he’s baffled I would drive all the way from New York to see birds. I have. And I’ll leave without seeing the Great Gray, which only means I’ll have to return.
Malheur is for the Birds
I love the word malheur, the way my neighbor in France sighs over the weather or a chicken that is ill: Quel Malheur. It’s impossible to translate the woe of the world, the adversity of life woven into those two words. Quel Malheur. But the Malheur in the news these days is the 187,000 acre Refuge in Eastern Oregon where a group of armed men are staked out, and not planning to leave.
In three days, I will slide into my Subaru wagon, loaded with skis and snowshoes, and head west, for Oregon. I’ve chosen a northerly route, through North Dakota and Montana, two states I have never visited. I’ll stop along the way, in search of northerly birds, hoping for such treats as a Great Gray Owl, but also less glamorous but still wondrous species for this Eastern girl, like Gray-crowned Rosy finch, or Evening Grosbeaks.
I love the word malheur, the way my neighbor in France sighs over the weather or a chicken that is ill: Quel Malheur. It’s impossible to translate the woe of the world, the adversity of life woven into those two words. Quel Malheur. But the Malheur in the news these days is the 187,000 acre Refuge in Eastern Oregon where a group of armed men are staked out, and not planning to leave.
In three days, I will slide into my Subaru wagon, loaded with skis and snowshoes, and head west, for Oregon. I’ve chosen a route through North Dakota and Montana, two states I have never visited. I’ll stop along the way, in search of northerly birds, hoping for such treats as a Great Gray Owl, but also less glamorous but still wondrous species for this Eastern girl, like Gray-crowned Rosy finch, or Evening Grosbeaks.
At the end of the journey I will be at Playa, a residency for artists and writers in Eastern Oregon. There, I intend to finish (ahem) writing my book, which chronicles the first two years of my bird-obsessed life. (Two chapters have been published online, here, and here.) I’m having a great time poking around in the past of bird watching history, learning about murders and murderers, adventures and misadventures, saints and sinners. The bird world is as complex and rich as any writer could hope for. Malheur certainly fits the definition of complex.
Malheur is not far from Playa, and I was hoping that it would be a stop on my route West, or a day trip away from writing. But the refuge is closed, the workers gone, many scared for themselves and their families. It is hard, for those of us in the East, to understand the Western relationship to land; the conflict between Dwight and Steven Hammond and the National Wildlife Preserve is decades old. So I don’t feel in any way qualified to speak on the situation—should these guys be in jail? I don’t know. What I do know, is that Ammon and Cliven Bundy have taken over the Refuge without support of locals, or the Hammonds. And, according to a writer in the National Law Journal, the standoff is legally untenable and many have written that the Bundy’s understanding of history and the constitution is poor at best. We all want them gone. More importantly: the birds want them gone.
The story that moved me is of the Malheur Field station director leaving the refuge (where birders and others can spend the night—the loss in revenue will be substantial). Before heading out, he spread seed for the wild Quail that count on him through the winter. What will happen to these and other birds, like the Great Horned Owls who have historically nested in the tower where the Bundy’s are staked out?
What I’m interested in is how birders—let’s call us a more peaceful group—have responded to this situation. Birders watch—and we are watching Malheur.
Renée Thompson, a birder and Oregon-based writer, has a terrific—that is historically based and reasonable—blog post on the history of the Refuge. Malheur was first protected in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt (who created the first National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island off Florida in 1903, with a snap of the two fingers). The goal was to protect birds. So let’s remember that. But some birders are using the same inflamed language as those who have taken the land, issuing warnings and declarations of “we will get you.” Maybe this is the way to go: fight fire with fire (which is a bad joke, as the at the heart of this stand off is that the Hammonds started a backfire to stop a fire ignited by lightening).
Kenn Kaufman is tweeting on the subject while Andy Revkin in his dot earth blog post for the New York Times analyzes the solutions to the standoff and ends with the intriguing idea of flooding the refuge in the spring with birders. It’s great idea. And then there are suggestions that “old lady birders” (you know, those of us in floppy hats) should stage a sit in. Why not? Is it possible to organize the estimated millions of birders in this country to peacefully win this standoff?
Closed or not, I’m stopping at Malheur to see this land, home to over three hundred species of bird. And for now, what I have to say about the Bundy men taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge: Quel Malheur.