For the Birds

I’m slowly becoming a birder. A lot of my childhood was spent with my father shushing me while he looked at something through his binoculars, so there’s history behind this. However, one of the things I really got from my dad was not a love of bird watching, but just the idea that all things out there have names (and if they don’t, you get to name them). For him and my step-mom, going out in nature was like going to see old friends: that bird, this plant, this rock.

I like knowing the names of some birds now, although it’s a vocabulary intensive activity. I really need to know the names in English, French and German if I’m going to talk about them with people in my community. Kind of a pain, but bird watching is one of those activities that if you can’t name it, it doesn’t count that you’ve seen it.

I also have the same feeling about mountains. They have names, might be good places to climb or ski (or just look at because there’s no access that seems particularly appealing; put Aiguille Verte into that category. I love to recognize that it’s there, but I don’t need to go there. There is no access that looks fun or safe.) I feel this way about the Marmolada in Italy, close to where we’re staying. The south face has many, many famous climbs but they are all so long my feet hurt just thinking about it.

Where I’m staying, I can see the north side of the Marmolada from my window, and this morning there were swallows out diving around. It was peaceful and beautiful. Later in the day it rained hard, and then there was a long, bright rainbow.

Now it’s late, the sun is gone and I can just see the outline of the ridge. It is beautiful and majestic, but no place I want to go.

I think sometimes that all of our pains and worries become easier to deal with if we can name them. It doesn’t even have to be the correct name. There’s probably a real name for the sort of sadness that I feel reading the daily news, but I don’t want to call it depression or helplessness. It’s easier if it’s just a bit of the blues, or empathitis (neologism, for when empathy is making you ill). I can just give it a name, and it becomes more manageable. The real name is for the birds.

Everyone be safe and well tonight. May you also have a warm nest under a roof to keep you out of the rain, and a feathery partner to snuggle up with. I have Foro, so I’ll be fine.