Excerpts

8. The Delightful Horror of Family Birding Two decades ago, in the ardor of my twenties, I sought the sublime. The sublime I sought, in the most ordinary sense of the word, mirrored that of many freewheeling young adults stretching their wings for the first time. I was after lofty heights, majestic mountains, and large-scale inspiration. Now, in my fourth decade of life and father of three young ones, sublime has been supplanted by another word: refuge. I crave it. From the moment I awake each morning, I am strafed by words and requests and noise. I am grateful for it and ultimately thankful, but like any parent, I seek breaks; short rest stops along the highway of life. Refuge, with all its connotations of retreat and tranquility, calls to me like the sublime used to. This is probably why I awoke at five a.m. last month to sneak out of my hotel room. Ever so gingerly, I eased the door shut, careful not to awaken the other four sleeping bodies splayed across the beds like sardines. Minutes later I was out of Brigham City, Utah, and easing my dusty car along the gravel roads of the nearby Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. Bear River is a refuge like few others. With a concentrated cauldron of the richest saline brew, the refuge offers a nutritious bounty with nearly every dive and dabble. Coupled with good vantage points and water nearly everywhere, it isn't surprising Terry Tempest Williams resonated with its ebb and flow as she did. Nor why Brigham City boldly declares itself the "Gateway to the World's Greatest Wild Bird Refuge" in a massive self-promotional sign that spans nearly six lanes of traffic. My morning in Bear River easily lived up to its billing. Thousands of burgundy white-faced ibis mechanically marched across the berms and dikes. Black-necked stilts pirouetted across mudflats on impossibly thin, lipstick-colored legs. Grebes, pheasants, avocets, and then, rounding a bend, the ultimate coup de grace sedate along the roadside: a short-eared owl. I rolled down the window, cut the engine and just looked. Yellow eyes met mine in what seemed a timeless vigil. My gaze drifted over the bird, noting the feathered feet, loose barring down the breast, and facial discs so pronounced that the nearest kin could well have been orangutans. In the middle of the discs sat the school bus yellow eyes, ringed in so much black it was clear that makeup artists got carried away; this owl was the Jack Sparrow of the bird world, right off the set of Pirates of the Caribbean. I wanted more time. But as usual with spontaneous owl encounters, the mysterious meter had expired. Ever so slightly, the owl tilted forward, pumped its wings powerfully, and flew off, its massive talons just missing the tops of the cattails as the bird melted into the morning haze. I exhaled, suddenly aware I hadn't breathed during the all-too-brief encounter. Despite the building heat, goose bumps ran down my spine. Smiling and satiated, I started the car and slowly left Bear River. I had found the refuge I'd sought. I'd also found a sliver of the sublime, not in the sense I used to seek, more toward the word's very etymology. "Sub" for "below," and "limen" for "threshold." In those piercing yellow eyes that reflected the intensity of my own, I'd found more than an owl; I'd found fearsome inspiration. Determined to spread the wealth, I tried recreating the morning I'd savored for my wife and children. As hotel staff was clearing away continental breakfast, I dutifully listed the birds I'd seen for my numbers-obsessed son. For my drama-oriented daughters, I animatedly acted out the antics of a frantic rail that had shared the road with me. After breakfast, I even dragged all of them over to the impressive Bear River visitor center where we ogled the exhibits and had snacks under a cacophony of nesting cliff swallows. Try as I might, however, I couldn't recreate the refuge I'd found. Like other hardheaded, slow-learning dads, I tried again a month later. After a few days of being cooped up in a new house in Oregon, my wife, her sister, and my three kids packed into the car and I eagerly announced that we were headed to Tule Lake, a waterfowl magnet nestled on the southeastern flank of the Klamath Mountains just across the border in California. This was no mere lake, however. Like Bear River, it was a designated National Wildlife Refuge. Like so many other refuges had before, surely Tule Lake would deliver a needed dose of retreat and tranquility. Endless rafts of pelicans and grebes set off by the slanting rays of an evening sun played through my head. It would be picturesque for sure, perhaps with even a pinch of the sublime. My intentions were flawless. Unfortunately everything else was flawed. Initial zeal was extinguished before we'd even cleared the mountains near our home. The road, windier than a tangled extension cord, tied our stomachs into knots. "Slow down, Dad, you're killing me!" shouted my woozy son from the back. My wife just buried her head in her hands. Just as our stomachs settled on the plains, we ran into the acrid smoke of one of Oregon's endless summer wildfires. We wheezed past a police officer, who, breathing into a mask, detoured us onto a side road. Our final turn, just four miles from the lake, found us freshly laid asphalt, which coated the car's undercarriage like recalcitrant phlegm. I slowed down to ease the asphalt assault. "Let's just find somewhere to pull over, sit down and enjoy the snacks I've brought," my wife said, with a forced tone of optimism. "How about right out there!" She pointed to a wide turnout. Eager to get out of the car and make something of this ill-fated trip, I eagerly acquiesced and pulled over. A long path led out to a well-built little building perched out on Tule Lake's north shore. A sign staked in the ground beside the beckoning path stated: "Wildlife Refuge Photography Bird Blind." "Perfect," my wife said. "We'll eat in the blind." Halfway out to the blind, the wind picked up and all of the ducks that had been close lifted off and disappeared. By the time my daughter had reached us at a run, every last coot and egret within 500 yards had departed for quieter waters. Once in the blind, my short-lived optimism sank faster than the last grebe. The blind, so dainty on the outside, was the arachnid capital of the world. Cobwebs coated every bench and plank. This was a world wide web we'd rather not connect to. Horrified, we backed out of the blind and spied a smaller one, resembling more of an outhouse, 50 yards off along another arm of the lake. Since the kids were the only ones who could fit in the smaller one, they took turns investigating the dilapidated structure. My two-year-old was the last to enter. Fittingly, she was the one to discover the nest of wasps. "Ahhh!" my wife cried, yanking shell-shocked Willow out of the blind. "Five wasps were crawling on her hand!" Whether it was panic or pain, Willow took her cue and started howling hysterically. This was defeat plain and simple. Grabbing the box of unopened snacks, I raised the white flag and ran for the car. My thought at the time was simple and straightforward. I wanted to leave. Quickly. Like my family, I was tired, frustrated, hot, and hungry. Even worse, I felt stupid. What had I been thinking? Obviously I couldn't recreate inspired moments I'd had. I needed refuge from this refuge. While feelings of retreat and peace evaded us, we got at least halfway to sublime. In its older usage, sublime evokes a delightful horror, a fear followed by joy. It extends further than mere beauty, which inspires tenderness and affection without fear and trembling. Many a frustrated artist has been unable to capture this rarefied and elusive quality. Irish writer and philosopher Edmund Burke perhaps described it best, writing that sublime moments inspired a sense of mind-filling terror, a healthy shock "that fills the mind with grand ideas and turns the soul in upon itself." Thankfully, there was a decided lack of mind-filling terror on our return trip. We fortified ourselves at a grand buffet, navigated around the smoke and fires, and laughed at the delightful horror of the Tule Lake bird blinds. And then, as I switched on my high beams to navigate the twilight as we wound our way back through the mountains, my sister-in-law uttered a word that again sent goose bumps down my spine. "Owl!" she said, pointing to a graceful silhouette atop a large Douglas fir. I pulled over and navigated the car into a position where we could all crane our necks and drink it in. Deep indigo outlined the owl's form and accentuated its ear tufts. Its head swiveled with magical flexibility, the body tilted slightly forward, and then it lifted off, dissolving into the night. Beautiful, sublime, or maybe just cool--I have no idea what the rest of my family was thinking as we watched the owl. Nor what they thought of our entire harebrained excursion to Tule Lake. But I do know that this day we managed to capture something that many don't; we captured something momentary and elusive. I also know that moment with the owl, we shared a collective retreat--a temporary tranquility--from life's daily onslaught of words, noise, and mindless distraction. Unlike Brigham City's claim of Bear River, this had most definitely not been the world's greatest refuge. As a father of three in my fourth decade of life, however, I'll take any refuge I can get.   Excerpted from The Delightful Horror of Family Birding: And Other Essays about Sharing Nature with the Next Generation by Eli Knapp All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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