Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

In 1967, my junior year of high school, the Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four” played endlessly on the radio. Forever after, 64 has seemed like the cut-off between young and old. Sometime around that year, my Grandpa, in his late sixties, broke his hip, and I remember my dad telling me Grandpa would never walk again because he was “too old to heal.” When my grandpa no longer needed even a cane to get around, proving that he wasn’t at all “too old to heal,” I still understood that he was old—just not “too old.”

The next summer, Paul Simon’s album Bookends was released, and the title song’s words, “How terribly strange to be seventy,” made that age seem dismally, hopelessly old. Now that I’m barely two weeks from being 74, seventy no longer seems strange, dismal, or hopeless, but I can’t get around the fact that it really does seem old.

Even as I notice my body slowing down a bit, I intend to keep taking birding trips as long as my physical and mental conditions are not a problem for other trip participants and guides. That means I want to stay as healthy and fit as a 70-something can be. Most of the things I’m doing to keep active aren’t new—I started doing much of this when I was much younger—but it’s become more important as I’ve hit my 70s. Today I’ll talk about ways I try to stay mentally fit. I’ll start with hydration.

I learned a lot about issues facing older people when Russ and I were taking care of his aging mother. Long before she moved in with us when she was 94, we noticed that sometimes she was vague, forgetful, and showed very bad judgment, while other times she seemed as lucid and on top of things as ever. When we realized the main issue was dehydration, we started reminding her to drink water more often—that was much easier during the times I was staying with her 24/7, and then after she moved in with us. As we get older, we lose our sense of thirst, and she simply didn’t think about drinking water on her own.

I’m considerably younger than she was when we started noticing her dementia, but I have noticed that my own brain is much clearer and quicker when I’m well hydrated, too. Hydration helps with something else, too. I’m starting to suffer from what I call “Old Lady Voice,” in which my voice gets very scratchy by day’s end. I usually record my radio program in the morning, but when I make presentations live or over Zoom in the evening, I want to sound reasonably good, and being well hydrated helps.

I seldom feel thirsty but can’t tell if that’s a new development in my dotage or if I never got very thirsty. To make sure I remember to drink enough water, I’ve gotten into the habit of filling my water bottle when I first go up to my desk each morning, making sure I’ve finished the bottle by lunch, and refilling it for the afternoon. When I do my aerobics exercises, I make sure I’ve finished off the bottle for that morning or afternoon and fill it up again—I always use up that bottle during my half hour exercising.

Travel can make hydration tricky—I like a window seat on airplanes and don’t like disturbing my seat mates, and I don’t like to make many pit stops while birding, especially where insects, snakes, and other creatures may be lurking or when I’m riding in a bus or van between birding spots. So in the week before a trip, I try to make sure I fill and use at least one extra water bottle each day, getting super-hydrated. Then unless the trip is a long one, I fill my water bottle every morning but don’t worry about a second or third except on days when activity or heat are an issue.

I’ve also found a few strategies for jogging my memory. It’s nothing new for me to have a word “right at the tip of my tongue” that I just can’t remember. It used to make me feel a little ditzy when I stumbled on a word, but when it happens now, the thought of dementia instantly pops into my head. When I was giving a keynote a few years ago, I even spaced on “Pomarine Jaeger”! That wasn’t a bird I’d been talking about—jaegers came up during the Q&A after my talk—but I found it scary. Now whenever I give a talk, I make sure every bird photo I use has the bird’s name in the bottom right. That’s also helpful for my audience when I’m using a bird photo to make some point and neglect to identify the species.

Before traveling, I prepare a little notebook diary for the trip, giving a 2-page spread for each day. Using the itinerary, I write in where we’re headed each day, any useful details like early starts and special target birds, and where we’ll be staying that night so I always know the evening before when I have to have all my luggage ready for a travel day. I keep the notebook in my belt pouch, so whenever we’re in the van, I can jot down notes. I started this system long ago, and depending on how busy a day is, I don’t always fill in details, but it really does help me keep track of where I need to be and when.

Next time I’ll talk about my strategies for keeping my body fit.