In Which We Are Excited By Birds

or A First Time for Everything

Oh, what a confusing subtitle:  we haven't even gone anywhere yet, and already we are off track.  To clarify, this is not the first time I have been excited by the sight of birds, even though I am not a bird-watcher.  I may not spend my days standing in dense woods looking with binoculars up into the tops of thickly foliaged trees for a tiny brown speck of avian life with a distinctive eye-ring, but if birds conveniently come and present themselves, I am happy to admire them.  Every year at about this time, some of my favorite birds pass by, and the first sighting of the season is always cause for celebration.  Actually, it's not the sight that's so moving at all.  It's the sound—but we're getting ahead of ourselves again.

I've been thinking about the difference between "autumn" and "fall" for no better reason than that...well, frankly, for no particular reason at all.  When writing I usually prefer "autumn"—I like its look on the printed page, its sound, and the fact that it isn't focused as wholeheartedly on leaves as "fall" is; besides which the bonus little "n" at the end is just so charming.  Perhaps because the preferred word here in the US has changed over the years from autumn to fall, autumn always seems to suggest the antique to me in ways that resonate fittingly with the year's aging.  On the other hand, I love that "fall" is really a verb.  Fall and spring are such active seasons, when we move rapidly from growth to sleep or back again to growth; it's only right that they should both be represented by verbs.  Summer, on the other hand, may look like an active season, but it's not a season of change in the same way.  It is a season of surface activity that window dresses only one primary event:  the growing season.  And winter—the other noun season—is of course a time of lying fallow and of rest.

For some reason I've been especially aware this year of the little events of fall.  (Maybe that's a useful distinction between a verb and a noun season:  the difference between activity and events.  Summer has lots of activity but very few events; fall has less activity but events a-plenty.)  I've been aware of all of the lasts, certainly:  the last hummingbird, the last basil harvest, the last use of the swamp cooler, soon the last early morning coffee on the patio, and hopefully the last of those endless "waterbugs."  But more so all of the firsts:  the first wolf spider seeking shelter indoors, the first moment that it's cool enough to plant garlic, then flowering bulbs, the first golden cottonwood leaf, the first time I reach for a jacket, the first lighting of the furnace pilot, soon the first frost, then the first killing frost, possibly someday the first snow.  All of these mark the progress of the season until we find ourselves knee-deep in autumn.

But my very favorite first, the one I start anticipating from the moment the rabbit brush blooms, is the first time the sandhill cranes fly over.  Thousands upon thousands of them winter here in New Mexico, whether along the Pecos River at Bitter Lake Wildlife Refuge or on the Rio Grande, most notably at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge but even here in Albuquerque at the Rio Grande Nature Center and the Open Space Visitors Center (and anyplace they can find a cornfield in between).

Festivals—weekend-long, even week-long—mark their arrival.  We love our cranes.  (Correction:  those of us who are not farmers with cornfields love our cranes.)  Their call—a kind of creaky purr—is one of the most wonderful sounds I know of (if you choose to click the sandhill cranes link above, be sure to listen to the recording).  To hear it from dozens of throats at once and then look up and see these large, graceful, delicately-boned birds circling hundreds of feet overhead, glinting silver in the sunlight, riding the thermals to gain altitude, or flying in a slow-winging V (with none of the frantic flapping the geese engage in), is to become homesick for the power of flight.  When I hear them leaving in spring I am always smitten hard with wanderlust; hearing them arrive in fall, on the other hand, is a kind of homecoming.  It is lovely to live in a place where autumn signals not only the departure of life but also its arrival; I suspect, however, that the appeal of the cranes lies also in that homing signal, received just as the days are closing in and the temperatures are dropping and the neighbors light their first piñon fire of the season and we all want to be nestled someplace warm in any case.  At such a time, anything that radiates "homecoming" is bound to be welcomed with fervor.

I heard the first cranes last weekend.

Now it's really fall.

In Which Mr. Jackson Is Enlightened

or I Love It When You Bug Me

A while ago I wrote about an unexpected thing that happened when I provided the gift of water to the small creatures in my garden. Lately I've discovered a gift I provided to Mr. Jackson (aka Mr. Toad) without meaning to. I'm warning you, however—this is a small happening, small even by the standards of someone with a blog called "Microcosm." The explanation-to-event ratio is waaaay out of proportion, but I'd love it if you could bear with me through this one.

Our story begins with the sad fact of waterbugs. These are large, outdoor cockroaches that like to come indoors at night primarily looking for water, though they also enjoy air conditioning, and they won't turn down a dish of dog food or an interesting trash can. (And a trash can under the kitchen sink near the water—OMG, OMG, OMG.) They don't seem to want to move in, though I'm sure they would if I made the place inviting enough; I've watched them march straight out the door (well, under the door) at the crack of dawn on more than one occasion. I was almost surprised that they didn't punch a tiny time clock on their way out.

I don't like them. Even though to the objective eye they are actually kind of a nice coppery shade of brown and seem quite cheeky and rather gregarious, mine is not an objective eye. The mess they make when you squish them is too...textured. I do my best to deter them each summer by making sure that the trash can never is interesting, putting all food garbage in the freezer until trash day, sprinkling diatomaceous earth around entryways, etc.   None of it really works.  Apparently, hope springs eternal, even for cockroaches. Maybe even especially for cockroaches. That is to say, waterbugs.

My latest strategy is to leave the kitchen light on from dusk until bedtime. It's not the "greenest" of solutions, but it does seem to work. The light shines out through the glass panels on the kitchen door and deters the waterbugs from entering. They may still come in after I've turned the light off and gone to bed, but I don't see them, and that's the main thing.

While light may deter some insects, of course, it also attracts others. Re-enter Mr. Jackson. On more than one evening, I have found him sitting on the path outside the kitchen door, with beams of light falling all around him. (And lo, how like a warty angel did he appear unto me.) He has been feasting on the insects hovering around the door—and possibly devouring some waterbugs into the bargain.

It never ever occurred to me that in turning on a light, I could feed a toad. (Note to the patient reader: that was the event.)

Why do I find this so beautiful? I'm not entirely sure. It tickles my funny bone, yes, but that's not quite it. Perhaps it's the serendipity, or maybe the efficiency of it—nature letting no gifts go to waste.  But I suspect it's more the awe of discovering how small actions have unforeseen consequences. It's kind of like "The Butterfly Effect" (the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas), only smaller, and with a hypothetical butterfly that actually knows that it caused a storm.

In fact, the more I write about it, the more certain I am that that's what I love about this little eventlet. We so seldom see the effects of our more-or-less random acts:  the small steps we take that reverberate across a larger plane. To see those reverberations in action—and to know that they're accidentally feeding a fat, happy toad—is a rare and wondrous thing. That knowledge is also comforting.  Since becoming ill with CFS, my life often feels horribly restricted, and the reminder that even small actions can have far-reaching consequences gives me hope. And of course, the adventurer in me is inspired to act even more. Because who knows what might happen?

Take a step, and set the world in motion.

Anything can happen.