Focus on ordinary
Among the things I like best about myself is that I have an
extremely low threshold for excitement.
Quite some years ago, we accompanied a visitor from the
Netherlands to the Monterey Peninsula. Standing at the edge of the
Pacific, on a dramatic shore that mixes sea, surf and granite in
equal measure, my wife and I exclaimed
”
What do you think!
”
Focus on ordinary
Among the things I like best about myself is that I have an extremely low threshold for excitement.
Quite some years ago, we accompanied a visitor from the Netherlands to the Monterey Peninsula. Standing at the edge of the Pacific, on a dramatic shore that mixes sea, surf and granite in equal measure, my wife and I exclaimed “What do you think!”
The reply: “Lotta rocks.”
Well, yeah …
That capacity for getting excited about the barely-less-than commonplace is not without its perils. I once spotted a red-tailed hawk on a fence at the intersection of Powell Street and Nash Road and the consequence was a car filled with screaming passengers. They have repeatedly expressed a profound lack of confidence in my ability to drive and bird watch at the same time.
That excitement threshold also makes it remarkably easy to grow distracted. Pulling weeds can easily lead into an exploration of the private lives of insects. You may already know this, and you may not be out with a pair of binoculars around your neck as often as I, but when peered through backwards and held close to an object of fascination, binoculars make great magnifying glasses.
My wife recently dropped two green caterpillars that she’d found on a sage plant into the palm of my hand. Knowing that they’d distract me for a while, it was a generous act of love rather than an attempt to elicit an “eeeewwwww!” response.
I think it’s worth it for all of us to recall the time as children when the sight of an airplane high overhead, or a cow in a pasture, was a pretty cool event.
I was peering at a pond filled with ducks in the company of Todd Newberry, the retired chair of the biology department at U.C. Santa Cruz. Newberry is also a published author, accomplished cellist and skilled birder.
I’d counted up the mallards in the pond and moved along, looking for less commonplace and more elusive quarry.
“You know, if they weren’t so common, we’d say the mallard was the most beautiful bird in the world,” Newberry said.
He’s right. He opened my eyes when they most needed it.
For some years I took kids in the local 4-H program out birding. One day during a short adventure at Dunne Park in Hollister, one of the kids turned her binoculars on a European starling that was busy setting up a nest inside some of the gingerbread on a nearby Victorian.
It’s important to know that most birders detest starlings. They are not native to North America. Their call is tuneless and grating. Their flight lacks grace. Worst of all, they aggressively appropriate nest sites that might otherwise be used by native birds.
“That bird is just so beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Turning my own binoculars on a bird I had never taken a careful look at before, I had to admit she was right. With something more than 300 million starlings in North America, I’d never taken time to appreciate one, and her observation brought the same thrill to me that she was experiencing.
The bird’s bill was bright yellow, and its glossy black feathers shone with iridescence, spangled with the bright bits of white that lend the bird its name.
That everyday bird definitely crossed my excitement threshold that day.
