Go, Shorty. It's Your Bird Day.

Every now and then, there will be a story on the news about some dope who went for a day-hike in the Rockies in a pair of cutoff shorts and a t-shirt and then had to be rescued from their own foolishness. I always think “What a dope. Who the hell doesn’t know how cold it gets in… THE ROCKIES… in WINTER…”

On a related note, it was about 25 degrees yesterday in the vast and sprawling grassland two hours north of my house last night and it was getting dark and I was very cold and I probably should have worn warmer clothes and brought a hat.

I wasn’t wearing cutoff shorts, so it’s not like I didn’t consider the elements at all.

It’s just that I had been in a real rush yesterday morning and couldn’t find my long johns or flannel-lined pants or thermal shirts and thought “Eh, How cold can it be? I won’t be outside all that long.”

Oh, I assure you, it can be quite cold.

It can also be windy.

Did I mention the wind? There was wind. Not a gusty wind. Not a wind that blows and then stops and then blows again. More a wind intent on teaching you a lesson. A scolding wind. “You should have found your flannel pants. LOL. How’s THIS feel…”

Now, you’re probably wondering to yourself “Why would a reasonable person be out in a vast and sprawling grassland on a bitterly cold day in the first place?”

They wouldn’t. They would not. A reasonable person would not. I, on the other hand, would because I suffer from severe, clinical planopia. It is like myopia (i.e. near sightedness) but affects only one’s vision when planning things. Ideas which are patently absurd appear perfectly reasonable from a place of great remove only to suddenly seem dramatically less so upon arrival.

As it turns out, it was not, in fact, reasonable for me to get in the car, pick up a friend, and then drive to New York State for a sunset walk on an extremely cold day. It made so much sense on Tuesday though. It seemed like exactly the thing to serve a whole number of objectives all at once and in an elegant, efficient, enjoyable way.

I have this friend, you see, who I’ve known forever. 25+ years. Almost thirty actually. We worked together back when we were in but our youths. We have one of those friendships that is time-independent. The kind where the length of time between get-togethers is immaterial. We just pick up where left off as if there has been no lapse.

He is between things right now. In transition from one source of employment to whatever will be the next. There are some moving parts there. I know that terrain well. It’s daunting and draining and stressful. The tendency is to grip the wheel tight and skip rest stops as you try to navigate the uncertainty. Sometimes, it helps to just leave the driving for a day, be a passenger, and look out the window.

So, having been in that place myself multiple times, I guessed my friend might be there now. Plus, I have this hotel hookup, and we’re overdue to get together regardless. Why not combine all of those ingredients into one tasty little brulee: a quick get-away to somewhere, a change of scenery, some fresh air, an overnight, and ample time to catch up. All of that was in the mixing bowl.

That particular set of ingredients didn’t come about by accident. The scenery, the fresh air. They came from a specific somewhere.

A few days ago, I was somehow reminded of the existence of a certain type of owl which I have never seen in my life and know absolutely nothing about. I literally couldn’t pick this damn owl out of an owl lineup but I vaguely recall having heard that other people had seen it last winter in a certain area.

No joke, no hyperbole, that was the sum total of the knowledgebase which fueled yesterday’s sequence of events: a vague recollection that other people had seen short-eared owls last winter in a certain area a couple hours north of me. Not a certain spot. A certain area.

Planopia doesn’t worry itself with those kinds of distinctions though. Areas, spots, counties, states, it’s all just trifling geography. Why worry our pretty little heads with trivia?

My pretty little head was unworried. It was far too busy thinking about winning the owl lottery be seeing a short-eared owl someday. It was that thought that was plinkity-plonking around in my brain like a lotto ball when I spoke with my friend about getting together.

Now, add to my outdoor aspiration the fact that my friend is a hiker. He’ll just go right ahead and go hike somewhere or something. For no reason! Not because he’s lost or fleeing a wildfire or being tailed by a bear.  He’ll just hike for the purpose of hiking – which I find to be a fairly ludicrous premise. I have no interest whatsoever in recreational elevation change just for the sake of it.

When we were much younger, there was a time when the two of us summited Pike’s Peak in the Colorado Rockies together. Fourteen-thousand-one-hundred-and-twelve-unnecessary-feet-above-sea-level. A whole damn mountain. We summited it together.

There’s a road. I drove. They have a nice little shop at the top. We had hot cocoa. It was lovely. That’s a nice hike to me.

Scrambling up rocky crags? No, thank you. I’ll pass. Take lots of pictures.

My friend proposed a hike. I countered with a nice walk maybe? Lots of horizontal, no vertical. Maybe somewhere with birds? Doesn’t that sound nice? A vast and sweeping winter grassland where people have allegedly seen owls in past winters. My god, that sounds fantastic in my opinion. What do you think? That’s rhetorical. I already booked us rooms at a Courtyard Inn up in Highway County, New York across from an Applebee’s. I’ll pick you up at 2:00 tomorrow.

I really wish I was being theatrical just for effect here…

When I got to thinking about where my friend and I could get away for a night which could bridge his form of outdoorsiness and mine, my planopia took the wheel and Thelma and Louised us up off an owl-chasing cliff, and then I was all “Why WOULDN’T we go tromp around in some frigid pampa looking for some damn owl. What’s to think about? The patent sensibility of this idea has already decided for us. We simply must…”

<Long, deep breath followed by a lonnnnnng sigh…>

Okay, so let us now to the marriage of multiple objectives admit some impediments:

Vast and sweeping grasslands are not petting zoos. Owls are not sea gulls. They are apparently wholly indifferent to your interest in their making an appearance. Also, winter is very cold. Its days are very short. It gets dark very early. And a 2:00 p.m. pickup followed by an hour-plus drive doesn’t get you there at noon. It gets you there near sunset. Or as I now think of it ‘pre-dark’.

You see where this is all going, right?

My friend and I enjoyed a leisurely ride up to New York. It had been a blue sky day. Temperatures had turned sharply lower earlier in the week, but the skies were bright and clear and made for lovely driving. I had fully intended to do sufficient research into where precisely people had allegedly seen short-eared owls in the area of my vague recollection. I had not, in fact, done that research though. All I had done was look up the name of a 600-acre refuge which I thought was the place. Waze seemed to be familiar with it. I took that as plenty of confirmation.

Picked up my friend at 2:00 as planned. We drove straight to the preserve and arrived with about an hour of light left. I had my camera with me and a pair of binoculars for my friend. After all, when a person pops by for a friendly visit with one or more owls, it would be nice to get a few pictures, wouldn’t it?

Having absolutely no idea where to go, my friend and I just parked in a lot and walked about the place a bit.

(As I may have mentioned, it is a grassland denoted by both a vastness and a great amount of sweep. It is vast and sweeping. And quite brisk in winter.)

After getting our bearings, we saw a viewing platform with a couple people standing on it. As we walked toward toward it, a friendly refuge volunteer intercepted us and struck up a conversation. Nice guy. Very chatty. I’ll spare you the full dialogue, the piece important to our story here:

Somebody had allegedly seen a short-eared owl a few weeks prior, but nobody had seen one since. It was too early in the winter for them. Give it until January. That’s the time to come.

I had gone to all of the trouble of doing no research whatsoever into seeing an elusive seasonal migrant only to be told that my lack of effort would not be rewarded. I didn’t deserve that. Yes, I very much did. I fully, deeply, richly, deserved exactly that.

I should’ve done the research. It would have taken a half-hour. I would have seen we were too early. I literally have an app that could have told me that.

Anyway, bummed as we were but now in for a dime, in for a dollar, my friend and I decided to just walk around.

I’ll say this, the place is just spectacularly beautiful at sunset. Sweet fancy Moses, it is peaceful and pretty. It is so beautiful, you forget about the cold. It literally warms you to the chill.

With the sun going down and us losing the light, I steered us down a trail with the sun at our backs. That way, should we happen to encounter a harrier or something, it would be well lit rather than silhouetted by the setting sun.

As we neared a place where the path made a 90-degree turn (and where we would need to turn around to head back) we saw a couple people up ahead of us. They were standing still with their backs turned to us. Each had a camera and was looking through it. Their two lenses were sweeping left and right in synchrony. They were watching something. We hustled up and looked. A hawk. A northern harrier probably. I know harriers well. I see them often. I can ID them from just their flight patterns.

The distant bird was doing what a harrier does… It was sweeping low in steady passes over the grassland… but there was just something a little jenky about it. Something in how it dove at prey. Harriers just.. dive. They fly level and then nose down. This bird was doing a little swoopity-swoop. A little swoop up and then a steep dive.

After watching for a few minutes, I told my friend that based on my ornithological experience, it was my considered opinion that we were, in fact, encountering a short-eared owl. Since he is not a birder, to be thoughtful, I used language accessible to layman.

I believe my exact words were “HOLY FUCK, THAT’S A FUCKING OWL!”

It was so far away though, I couldn’t get a picture. I couldn’t track it with my lens. I couldn’t get it in focus. I didn’t care. I took frame after frame knowing they would likely all be crap. Maybe there would be one. Just one.

We just watched this one owl… and then there was another. The two of them just worked the field hunting in the last light. Back and forth. Swooping and diving and the swooping again.

It was magic, man.

As the light really started to fade, my friend and I started back up the path toward the parking lot while looking out over the fields ahead even though the owls were now off behind us.

And then they weren’t.

One worked its way up the tree line to the right of us and then past. The other flew right past on our left. I swiveled with camera as fast as I could but it was so dark through my viewfinder, I could barely see. I just shot and shot and shot… and hoped. There was no time see if I had the settings right. There was only time to shoot and hope… and then cross your fingers later before you opened up the pictures.

I shot until too dark to see through my camera and then we got in the car with the sun already well below the distant first foothills of the Catskills. Then we trekked down to the place we were staying; checked in; showered up; and then met up to figure out dinner.

As we were talking, I downloaded the pictures. My friend was sitting next to me as I opened them.

Y’all…

Y’aaaaaall……..

Y’aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllll………………………………………

OMG. I could cry.

(Might have already cried. Might still cry.)

Look at these…

You have no idea how happy these pics make me. It isn’t the photographs. It isn’t the images. It is the precious rarity of the moment. The insane luck. The fortune. The gift of it. And now, the gift of having it captured to keep.

The pictures freeze up a moment for me. They bottle it up, stop time, preserve it.

They record a mental clip which I can now replay:

My friend and I out in a winter cold we didn’t much feel as short-eared owls soared and swooped and swept over a golden grassland in the last light of day. One owl sweeping past so close, we could see the blazing orange of ‘golden hour’ reflected off its feathers.

After my friend and I looked at the pictures, we set off for dinner at a cozy place with good, hearty food. We were back at the hotel by 9:30 and then hung out in the lobby for a couple hours catching up. It was a good day, good night, good trip.

The irony is that had I known the actual odds of seeing a short-eared owl on November 29^th, we wouldn’t have gone.

Had I done the research, we wouldn’t have gone.

Make of that what you will.

What I make of it is that sometimes life is just gentle. Soft… Giving… Generous.

Life is never fair. What we ‘deserve’ and what ‘happens to us’ are independent of each other. We suffer in ways we shouldn’t be made to suffer, and we benefit in ways we’ve done nothing to earn. Life is simply life when kind or cruel and ‘fairness’ is never the reason even when it is the outcome.

There is what we do and what we get and they are just two pendulums swinging on their own. When they are in the worst opposition, there is nothing to do but hold on to the knowledge that they will someday swing back toward each other. When they are in the very best opposition – when we get more then we deserve - we should notice… be thankful… be moved by the gift of that fortune.

I feel not one ounce of embarrassment in telling you that I choked up writing this. It’s about freaking owls. I’m sitting in a lobby with people scuffling past and have had to periodically wipe my eyes and I don’t care.

Treasure your treasures.

No matter how big or small, treasure your treasures.

Whatever it is that brings you joy, exalt in it.

Even if it’s just a bird, just a moment…