For 27 years, 17 times a year, my Dad went on a 37 hour trip into the Catskills. We lived in Binghamton when I grew up (my parents were college professors, I should have known I was cursed from the start) and one of my earliest memories was my dad mysteriously packing up the Volvo and driving alone to the West Kill Mountain range. He was doing what men do when left alone in the world. I mean he had my mom and I, but what he really wanted to be was completely alone. Lost in the world, adrift, flying with a melancholy grace reserved for men his age. The truth is I guess I never really understood the purpose of the trips. He said he was documenting birds. He told everyone he was an ornithologist but just wasn’t getting paid for it yet and he should know because he taught economics. That was his favorite joke to make at dinner parties. My parents stopped getting invited to dinner parties before long. On his research trips he would write down every bird he saw on his hikes near strange towns with names like Phoencia, Saugerties and Shandaken. He sent the results to Syracuse University, though God knows what they actually did with his copious notes and pencil sketches. Every few weeks it was the same, up 88 and back down 23. A voyage with a purpose that became at once deeper and stranger as the years went by.
As a child I was in awe, constantly and completely, of my dad. He was like a modern, nicer smelling Odysseus to me. It honestly makes me really mad when I think about it now. While other kids talked about their dad the lawyer or their dad the accountant (funny how the kids with janitor parents never spoke up in this early social pissing contest) I proudly said my dad was a bird. I even drew him that way in my first grade family portrait. See I actually thought he was part bird back then. It’s all my mom’s fault. One time when he left without saying goodbye (which he did a lot), I remember asking her why he is with the birds and not us and she said that my dad was so special that he could transform into a bird and every so often he needed to do that so he could help all the little bird families in the mountains who needed him.
Here are some important dates in my dad’s bird watching career that I have burned into memory: August 8, 1977 Red-winged Blackbird (the day I was born); September 12, 1990 Downy Woodpecker (the day my mom left him); June 3, 2003 Rose-breasted Grosbeak (the day I got married); May 29, 2007 Yellow Warbler (the day his own dad died).
Last week I forgot it was my dad’s birthday. I called him this morning but I got his answering machine. He is with the birds again I suppose.
*This little meditation/poem/prose/whatever was inspired by a real-life bird watching dad I heard about from a colleague of mine at The New School. I think he’s making a documentary about it.
And today two songs because I said so.
(Easter Vomit’s Easter Vomit vs. The Natural History Museum album for free download)
(Air Waves’ self titled EP is out of print but buy other things from them)
