Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

Before I head off on a new adventure, I can’t help but think of some of the many misadventures I’ve had in the past. From the time I slipped off a slippery bank into our town’s muddy creek when I was a little girl, I’ve taken a few spills here and there.

On the morning of my very first Christmas bird count in 1976 in Madison, Wisconsin, I found myself in a team with two men, neither of whom seemed happy to have me along. We were covering the arboretum, and within the first hour we came to a small lovely stream and each jumped across. My foot slipped and I fell hard, spraining my ankle. But there was no way on earth I could possibly bring myself to tell these men who seemed so tough and forbidding. So I got up, dusted the snow off my clothes, and walked along, trying to hide the limp, my eyes spurting tears so hard that I had to keep taking my glasses off and wiping freezing salt water from them. After an hour or two, the searing pain ebbed to a dull throbbing pain, and walking became easier. We stopped at one team member’s house for lunch. Fortunately, he let us keep our boots on because the pain was simply too excruciating to take mine off. When I got home at the end of a very long day, Russ pulled the boot off with great difficulty, the ankle had swollen to double its normal size. It healed fairly well, but has ever since then been rather weak, every four or five years spontaneously giving out and requiring taping for a few days.

When I’ve told this story to people, one common response has been, I hope you learned your lesson. But what lesson should one draw from this kind of experience? To never jump across streams? I’ve jumped across plenty of streams before and since and never slipped like that. I’d have missed a lot of wonderful experiences had I drawn that lesson. Should I have told the two guys I was with? It may have been a silly display of bravado not to, but if I had, they’d have nagged me all day or even sent me home, and I would have lost that whole day with several Rusty Blackbirds strutting along in the snow along another stream bank, a screech owl poking its head out of a wood duck box, a flock of red crossbills feeding in some pines, and lots of other wonderful sights that were beautiful despite the pain. At home I’d have been in pain too, just without all that loveliness.

A potentially far more dangerous fall happened when I was in Arizona with Russ and our six-month old baby Joey. I get up early one morning, nursed Joey, put him back to sleep, and headed off on my own to bird a few trails in Madeira Canyon.

Suddenly I heard an Ash-throated Flycatcher, a lifer! I searched the branches, stepping backwards to get a better angle, and abruptly the ground dropped out from under my feet. I’d literally backed off a cliff!

You know those Saturday morning cartoons where Roadrunner has close calls with last moment rescues? That’s pretty much exactly what happened to me. A tree growing out of the side of the cliff two or three feet below the path just happened to be there to catch and hold me at a perfect angle to see the bird. I savored it for several seconds before I looked down and saw just how far below me the ground was. That tree had quite literally saved my life. It was tricky climbing back up and I was a little shaken, but not so much that I couldn’t keep going and seeing more birds.

I did learn from this experience to be more mindful of dangers in the terrain and not to walk backwards unless I’m darned sure of exactly what I’m walking toward.

I’ve had a few other outdoor misadventures which I’ll tell about next time. I’m Laura Erickson, speaking for the Birds.